Sleep is essential to brain development and maturation in infants.1 Infants require extensive sleep for further development of the neu-rosensory systems; structural development of the hippocampus, pons, brainstem, and midbrain2; and optimizing physical growth.3 Protecting infant sleep is a critical component of providing developmentally appropriate care for premature and full-term infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) because many of these infants are hospitalized during one of the most critical periods of brain development.4 To best provide developmentally appropriate care, identification of sleep-wake states is necessary.
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