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Published on: August 2, 2017
Slow rhythms and sleep spindles in early infancy
1Dept. of Medical Physics University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53705-2275, USA.
Objective:
To investigate the slow rhythm and its relationship to spindling in early infancy.
Methods:
We analyzed sleep MEG recordings containing sleep spindles, taken from 7 normal, healthy subjects at conceptional age 46-63 weeks in 21 sessions.
Results:
We show that the sleep MEG in early infancy contains a slow rhythm, centered at approximately 0.2Hz, which showed a striking association with spindling. The slow rhythm grouped sleep spindles, which were clock-like with a recurrence rate of approximately 0.1Hz.
Conclusions:
The association of the 0.2Hz oscillation and low delta rhythms with spindling was so strong as to suggest that they may play a critical role during brain development in the genesis of sleep spindles.
Significance:
Infant brain rhythms exhibit relatively simple, regular behavior, allowing the relationships between them to be more easily discerned.
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