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upstart writes:

Team led by Japanese researchers reveals best way to put crying baby to sleep:

The evidence-based soothing strategy was derived from experiments carried out in Japan and Italy, which were analyzed and published in the journal Current Biology on Tuesday.

[Senior author Kumi] Kuroda and colleagues wanted to explore this further in humans, and to compare the effect against other comforting behaviors such as rocking in one spot.

They recruited 21 mother-baby pairs aged 0-7 months, and tested them under four conditions: carrying while moving, held still by their sitting mothers, lying in a still crib, or lying in a rocking cot.

Crying decreased and heart rates slowed within 30 seconds when infants were transported. There was a similar effect when they were rocked, but not when held motionless.

[...] This suggested that, contrary to assumptions, maternal holding was insufficient to calm a child, and the transport response was an important factor.

Next, they looked at the impact of carrying infants for five minutes, finding that the activity put 46 percent of them to sleep, and an additional 18 percent fell asleep in the minute after.

This showed that not only did carrying stop crying, it also promoted sleep.

But there was a wrinkle: when infants were put to bed, more than one-third became alert within 20 seconds.

Electrocardiogram readings showed the babies' heart rates rose the second they were detached from their mother's bodies.

However, when the babies were asleep for a longer period of time before being put down, they were less likely to awaken.

Kuroda said she found this surprising, as she had assumed other factors like the way they were placed in bed or their posture would play a role, but this was not the case.

Journal Reference:
Kumi O. Kuroda,A method to soothe and promote sleep in crying infants utilizing the Transport Response, Current Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.08.041. www.cell.com/current-biology/f ... 0960-9822(22)01363-X

Original Submission