Joel Frohlich - Searching for the emergence of consciousness in infants and fetuses

Our earliest memories often date back to the toddler years. However, this may not tell the whole story of our first experiences. The possibility of earlier experiences, i.e., infant consciousness, has strong bioethical implications. While infants were sometimes operated on without anesthesia as recently as the 1980s, the vast majority of researchers today believe that infants are at least probably conscious. Infants, newborns, and possibly even late-term fetuses may possess inner lives that simply do not leave lasting memories. This talk will examine the evidence for three possibilities: consciousness arising before, during, or after birth. At 35 weeks gestation, fetuses begins to exhibit cortical responses, measured with MEG, suggestive of predictive processing, often associated with consciousness. At birth, the dramatic shift from the womb's sedating environment to the stimulating outside world may necessitate the development of awareness, and some resting state fMRI networks associated with consciousness are in place no later than full term birth. However, an important developmental milestone is the postnatal GABA shift, which raises questions about the balance of neural inhibition/excitation and the complexity of newborn brain activity, potentially relating to the emergence of consciousness. Because any given marker of consciousness that has been validated in adults might not translate to infants, a “cluster-based” approach is likely needed. This approach, which looks for a convergence of diverse markers, avoids relying on any single marker and remains agnostic to specific theories of consciousness.

Full title: The first experience: searching for the emergence of consciousness in infants and fetuses