Читать книгу Child Psychology - Jean-Pascal Assailly - Страница 69

We now know more about fetal sleep. The proportion of REM sleep, and therefore of dreaming, increases between the 32nd and 40th week, which corresponds to a phase of rapid maturation of the brain, in which dreaming plays a role.

The preponderance of REM sleep during the fetal period could be explained by the immaturity of the brain (Dugas 2019): its small size would be intended to facilitate the mother’s delivery; in return, REM sleep, which is more agitated, would allow for both the accelerated multiplication of the neuronal circuits necessary for the development of the central nervous system and the facilitation of learning. Finally, it could be used for genetic programming (the main basic behaviors are learned in utero and at the very beginning of life (Jouvet 2000)).