Amazing stuff!
"... To summarize the current state of progress on the topic, ... team of neuroscientists and philosophers from Australia, Germany, the US, and Ireland conducted a review of the literature to date.
According to their findings, there's enough evidence to argue in favor of an early state of awareness, one that could operate long before birth. ..."
From the highlights and abstract:
"Highlights
- The study of infant (and fetal) consciousness is emerging as a distinctive research focus in the science of consciousness.
- Converging evidence from studies of functional network connectivity, attention, multimodal integration, and cortical responses to global oddballs suggests that consciousness is likely to be in place in early infancy and may even occur before birth.
- Recent research is beginning to provide clues about both the content and structure of infant consciousness.
Abstract
Although each of us was once a baby, infant consciousness remains mysterious and there is no received view about when, and in what form, consciousness first emerges. Some theorists defend a ‘late-onset’ view, suggesting that consciousness requires cognitive capacities which are unlikely to be in place before the child’s first birthday at the very earliest. Other theorists defend an ‘early-onset’ account, suggesting that consciousness is likely to be in place at birth (or shortly after) and may even arise during the third trimester. Progress in this field has been difficult, not just because of the challenges associated with procuring the relevant behavioral and neural data, but also because of uncertainty about how best to study consciousness in the absence of the capacity for verbal report or intentional behavior. This review examines both the empirical and methodological progress in this field, arguing that recent research points in favor of early-onset accounts of the emergence of consciousness."
Figure 1 Four perspectives on the emergence of consciousness.
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