Making of the mind

Abstract

The essence of the mind is consciousness. It emerged early during evolution and ontogeny appears to follow the same process as phylogeny. Consciousness comes from multiple sources, including visual, auditory, sensorimotor and proprioceptive senses.These gradually combine during development to build a unified consciousness, due to the constant interactions between the brain, body, and environment. In the human the emergence of consciousness depends on the activation of the cortex by thalamocortical connections around 24 weeks after conception. Then, the human foetus can be potentially conscious, as it is aware of its body and reacts to touch, smell and sound and shows social expressions in response to external stimuli. However, it is mainly asleep and probably not aware of itself and its environment. In contrast, the newborn infant is awake after its first breaths of air and can be aware of its own self and others, express emotions and share feelings. The development of consciousness is a progressive, stepwise, structural and functional evolution of multiple intricate components. The infant fulfils some of the more basic criteria for consciousness. However, there are some important missing pieces at this stage, as it cannot remember the past and anticipate the future. K E Y W O R D Sarousal, brain maturation, consciousness, foetus, newborn

Fetal eye movements in response to a visual stimulus

“…This interpretation of the data suggests fetal awareness of the environment. A view present in the literature is that the fetus is actively maintained asleep during uterine life by endogenous substances such as intrauterine endocrine neuroinhibitors, that is, the fetus lacks “awareness” (Lagercrantz, 2016; Padilla & Lagercrantz, 2020). It has also been argued there is no evidence that the fetus lacks awareness or exists in a different conscious state (Platt, 2011).…”

The intimate relationship between coalescent generators in very premature human newborn brains: Quantifying the coupling of nested endogenous oscillations

“…The emergence time of these oscillations is before the emergence of the segregated and not‐yet developed higher order networks. It is therefore of interest to investigate to what extend these endogenous oscillatory activities can be considered as early neurobiomarkers of the development of multimodal sensory networks, which can later in the course of development lead to cortical sensory awareness (Padilla & Lagercrantz, 2020). This requires a multimodal analysis of the endogenous activates and a cohort which permits the follow‐up of the infants' neurodevelopment.…”

Magnetoencephalographic Signatures of Conscious Processing Before Birth

“…The similarity of results in fetuses and newborns emphasizes the role of behavioral state for learning in early life. Furthermore, results are interesting in the light of discussions on how much sedative placental hormones in the fetal environment suppresses fetal wakefulness (Lagercrantz and Changeux, 2009; Padilla and Lagercrantz, 2020). The difference in responses shown by fetuses in different behavioral states challenges the assumption that fetuses are mostly asleep and that the fetal environment suppresses conscious processing of stimulation from outside the womb.…”

“…Can a fetus be conscious? Not only has this question remained unsolved for many decades, it has also fostered numerous discussions (Anand et al, 1999; Lagercrantz and Changeux, 2009; Padilla and Lagercrantz, 2020). The answer to the question of fetal consciousness mainly depends on two aspects: First, how do we define consciousness and what are its neurophysiological correlates?…”