A new approach to discovering when consciousness emerges in infants has been proposed by University of Birmingham academics. By identifying adult consciousness markers and detecting their appearance in infants, the researchers aim to clarify the developmental timeline of consciousness. This method challenges previous theories and suggests a more complex, multi-stage emergence of consciousness, offering a promising direction for future research in the field.
When over the course of development do humans become conscious? When the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes was asked about infant consciousness by his critics, he eventually suggested that infants might have thoughts, albeit ones that are simpler than those of adults. Hundreds of years later, the issue of when human beings become conscious is a question which remains a challenge for psychologists and philosophers alike.
Dr Taylor says: “For example, imagine that in adults, we know that a certain very specific behavior, or a specific pattern of brain activation always comes along with consciousness. Then, if we can identify when this behaviour or brain activation arises in babies, we have good reason to think that this is when consciousness emerges in babies. Behaviors and brain activations like this are what we call ‘markers’ of consciousness.
But Professor Bremner and Dr Taylor say that this ignores other markers of consciousness. Previous research has identified a separate cluster of markers. These include:• Intentional control .Dr Taylor said: “One of the complicated issues is that it does not look like all the markers point to the same age for the emergence of consciousness.
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