Are newborns far more conscious than we previously believed?
In short: For decades, we viewed newborns as passive observers of a chaotic world. This video explores groundbreaking neuroscience suggesting that infants—and perhaps even late-term fetals—may possess a level of conscious awareness that challenges our fundamental understanding of the beginning of life.
Psychologist and philosopher Claudia Passos Ferreira examines how recent research is overturning the old belief that newborns were entirely unconscious or unable to feel pain. By analyzing neuroscience and psychology, the talk reveals that babies actively take in their environment.
Evidence from brain scans shows that infants respond to pattern variations using the same brain regions as adults. Furthermore, babies exhibit similar attentional shifts to adults, though they require significantly more time to move their focus from one stimulus to another. This research suggests that the capacity for conscious thought and processing may begin as early as the final weeks of pregnancy.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Claudia Passos Ferreira: Inside the mind of a newborn baby
- Also: Inside the Mind of a Newborn Baby | UConn KIDS (Kids in Developmental Science) | University of Connecticut
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