What Your Baby’s Brain Is Doing During Sleep

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:13]Newborns spend nearly 50% of their sleep in REM, the dream stage, more than at any other point in the human life. That is not random. The brain uses REM sleep to build and strengthen neural connections. And the baby's brain is doing this faster than it ever will again. The crying and thrashing that you see isn't a nightmare. A true nightmare requires a sense of self, and that doesn't develop until ages two or three.

[00:00:34]What you're seeing here is an immature system where the brain hasn't yet learned to paralyze the muscles during run. So, the movement and the sounds will break through. But as children grow and their dreams become more complex, something interesting starts to happen.

[00:00:47]Research suggests that children with vivid imagination in a rich dream life often show stronger divergent thinking, the ability to create ideas and solutions. The same brain networks active during dreaming are also involved in imagination, emotional processing, social understanding, and future thinking. In many ways, dreaming may be a part of how children's brain process their experiences and develop an understanding of the world. That is not something to necessarily be scared about. It may be simply the brain actively growing and learning.