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Should you let your babies "cry it out" or rush to their side? Researchers have found that leaving an infant to 'cry it out' from birth up to 18 months does not adversely affect their behaviour development or attachment.

The study, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, found that an infant's development and attachment to their parents is not affected by being left to "cry it out" and can actually decrease the amount of crying and duration.

"Only two previous studies nearly 50 or 20 years ago had investigated whether letting babies 'cry it out' affects babies' development. Our study documents contemporary parenting in the UK and the different approaches to crying used," said the study's researcher Ayten Bilgin from the University of Warwick in the UK.

For the study, the researchers followed 178 infants and their mums over 18 months and repeatedly assessed whether parents intervened immediately when a baby cried or let the baby let it cry out a few times or often.

They found that it made little difference to the baby’s development by 18 months.

The use of parent’s leaving their baby to ‘cry it out’ was assessed via maternal report at term, 3, 6 and 18 months and cry duration at term, 3 and 18 months.

Duration and frequency of fussing and crying was assessed at the same ages with the Crying Pattern Questionnaire.

According to the researchers, how sensitive the mother is in interaction with their baby was video-recorded and rated at 3 and 18 months of age.

Attachment was assessed at 18 months using a gold standard experimental procedure, the strange situation test, which assesses how securely an infant is attached to the major caregiver during separation and reunion episodes.

Behavioural development was assessed by direct observation in play with the mother and during assessment by a psychologist and a parent-report questionnaire at 18 months.

Researchers found that whether contemporary parents respond immediately or leave their infant to cry it out a few times to often makes no difference on the short - or longer term relationship with the mother or the infants behaviour.

This study shows that 2/3 of mum's parent intuitively and learn from their infant, meaning they intervene when they were just born immediately, but as they get older the mother waits a bit to see whether the baby can calm themselves, so babies learn self-regulation.

Washington D.C., Jan 12: Disruption in one night's sleep can lead to getting Alzheimer's disease, a recent study has stated.

The interruption in the sound sleep for a single night aggravates the level of tau protein in any young male's body, thus gives rise to the chances of developing the disease.

According to CNN, the report was published on Wednesday in neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"Our study focuses on the fact that even in young, healthy individuals, missing one night of sleep increases the level of tau in blood suggesting that over time, such sleep deprivation could possibly have detrimental effects," says study author Dr Jonathan Cedernaes, a neurologist at Uppsala University in Sweden.

As defined by the Alzheimer's Association, tau is the name of a protein that helps in stabilizing the internal structure of the brain's nerve cells. An abnormal build-up of tau protein in the body can end up in causing interior cells to fall apart and eventually developing Alzheimer's.

"When you get more of that deep sleep and you get the REM sleep in the normal amounts, that improves clearance of abnormal proteins which we think is good," said Mayo Clinic neurologist Dr Donn Dexter, not the study author but a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology.

Earlier studies have also shown that getting deprived of sleep can allow higher tau development and accumulation. Thus that poor sleep can hasten the development of cognitive issues.

Researchers caution that the study is small and inconclusive, and acknowledged they were not able to determine what the increased levels might mean.

"This study raises more questions than answers," agreed Dexter on a concluding note, sharing, "What this is telling us is that we have to dig more deeply. Despite something we do for a third of our lives, we know so little about sleep and we're learning every day, particularly when it comes to sleep and dementia."

Bergen, Mar 5: Divorce of parents may impact the academics of children negatively, suggests a new study.

According to the study, parental divorce is associated with a lower grade point average (GPA) among adolescents, with a stronger association seen in teens with more educated mothers.

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Children and adolescents with divorced or separated parents are known to do less well in school than adolescents with nondivorced parents and to be less well-adjusted, on average, across a spectrum of physical and mental health outcomes.

In the new study, researchers used data from the youth@hordaland study, a population-based survey of adolescents aged 16-19 conducted in the spring of 2012 in Hordaland County, Norway.

19,439 adolescents were invited to participate and 10,257 agreed; of those, 9,166 are included in the current study.

Overall, adolescents with divorced parents had a 0.3 point lower GPA (standard error 0.022, p<0.01) than their peers.

Controlling for parental education reduced the effect by 0.06 points to 0.240 (SE 0.021, p<0.01). This heterogeneity was predominantly driven by maternal education levels, the researchers found.

After controlling for paternal education and income measures, divorce was associated with a 0.120 point decrease in GPA among adolescents whose mothers had a secondary school education level; a 0.175 point decrease when mothers had a Bachelor's level education; and a 0.209 point decrease when mothers had a Master's or PhD level education (all estimates relative to adolescents with a mother who had a basic level of education, such as ISCED 0-2).

Due to the cross-sectional structure of the study, researchers could not investigate specific changes between pre- and post-divorce family life, and future studies are needed to investigate potential mechanisms (such as reduced parental monitoring or school-involvement) which might drive this finding.

Nonetheless, this study provides new evidence that the negative association between divorce and teens' GPA is especially strong in families with more educated mothers.

"Among Norwegian adolescents, parental divorce was hardly associated with GPA among youth whose parents have low educational qualifications. In contrast, among adolescents with educated or highly educated mothers, divorce was significantly associated with lower GPA," said the authors.