Not with a “zap” but with a “beep”: Measuring the origins of perinatal experience

• Published in: NeuroImage (Orlando, Fla.) Vol. 273; p. 120057
• Main Authors: Frohlich, Joel, Bayne, Tim, Crone, Julia S., DallaVecchia, Alessandra, Kirkeby-Hinrup, Asger, Mediano, Pedro A.M., Moser, Julia, Talar, Karolina, Gharabaghi, Alireza, Preissl, Hubert
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01.06.2023; Elsevier Limited; Elsevier
• Subjects: Basic Medicine; Brain; Brain mapping; Brain research; Child; Cognition; Cognition & reasoning; Consciousness; EEG; Electroencephalography; Electroencephalography - methods; Female; Fetus; Fetuses; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Humans; Infant; Infant, Newborn; Infants; Magnetic resonance imaging; Magnetoencephalography; Medical and Health Sciences; Medical imaging; Medicin och hälsovetenskap; Medicinska och farmaceutiska grundvetenskaper; MEG; Nervous system; Neural networks; Neuroimaging; Neurosciences; Neurovetenskaper; Perinatal; Perturbational complexity; Pregnancy; Sensory integration; Thalamus; Uterus; Perinatal; Infant; Fetus; Perturbational complexity; Consciousness; MEG
• ISSN: 1053-8119; 1095-9572; 1095-9572
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120057

•Consciousness may emerge after thalamocortical networks form at 26 weeks gestation.•A “local-global” approach suggests consciousness in newborns and 35 week fetuses.•Default mode network activity has been observed in fetuses from 37 weeks.•We propose that sensory perturbations may be used to infer perinatal consciousness.•This could be done using prediction errors to perturb perinatal brain networks. When does the mind begin? Infant psychology is mysterious in part because we cannot remember our first months of life, nor can we directly communicate with infants. Even more speculative is the possibility of mental life prior to birth. The question of when consciousness, or subjective experience, begins in human development thus remains incompletely answered, though boundaries can be set using current knowledge from developmental neurobiology and recent investigations of the perinatal brain. Here, we offer our perspective on how the development of a sensory perturbational complexity index (sPCI) based on auditory (“beep-and-zip”), visual (“flash-and-zip”), or even olfactory (“sniff-and-zip”) cortical perturbations in place of electromagnetic perturbations (“zap-and-zip”) might be used to address this question. First, we discuss recent studies of perinatal cognition and consciousness using techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and, in particular, magnetoencephalography (MEG). While newborn infants are the archetypal subjects for studying early human development, researchers may also benefit from fetal studies, as the womb is, in many respects, a more controlled environment than the cradle. The earliest possible timepoint when subjective experience might begin is likely the establishment of thalamocortical connectivity at 26 weeks gestation, as the thalamocortical system is necessary for consciousness according to most theoretical frameworks. To infer at what age and in which behavioral states consciousness might emerge following the initiation of thalamocortical pathways, we advocate for the development of the sPCI and similar techniques, based on EEG, MEG, and fMRI, to estimate the perinatal brain's state of consciousness.