Sleep for development or development for waking? — some speculations from a human perspective

Abstract

The issue of the relationship between sleep and development could be posed in the following terms: (1) does sleep have a function for development? and (2) which is the specificity of sleep function during development? Is it possible to assess critical ages of emergence and decline of specific sleep functions? The results of recent investigations related to the so-called ontogenetic hypothesis for the function of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep will be reviewed; suggestions are put forward concerning the possible role of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. Because of the difficulties to provoke long-lasting sleep deprivation in humans during development, two different approaches were used. The results of one set of analyses concerned the secretion of growth hormone during sleep under normal and pathological conditions and the relationship between sleep organization and nutritional supply utilisation in infants and children. The second approach aimed at investigating the long-term development of children suffering from sleep abnormalities at earlier ages. Furthermore, the role of dreaming during development will be discussed. The data summarized here only partly support the function of sleep during development; we would like to underscore the difficulty to dissociate the function of sleep from that of waking.