Not with a “zap” but with a “beep”: Measuring the origins of perinatal experience
Joel Frohlich,
Tim Bayne,
Julia S. Crone,
Alessandra DallaVecchia,
Asger Kirkeby-Hinrup,
Pedro A.M. Mediano,
Julia Moser,
Karolina Talar,
Alireza Gharabaghi,
Hubert Preissl
Affiliations
Joel Frohlich
Institute for Neuromodulation and Neurotechnology, University Hospital and University of Tübingen, Germany; Corresponding author.
Tim Bayne
School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Julia S. Crone
Department of Psychology, Pritzker Hall, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Vienna Cognitive Science Hub, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Alessandra DallaVecchia
Department of Psychology, Pritzker Hall, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Asger Kirkeby-Hinrup
Department of Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden; Cognitive Neuroscience Research Unit, Center for functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University, Denmark
Pedro A.M. Mediano
Department of Computing, Imperial College London, London, UK; Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Julia Moser
IDM/fMEG Center of the Helmholtz Center Munich at the University of Tübingen, Division of Diabetology, Endocrinology and Nephrology, Department of Internal Medicine, German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD), Tübingen, Germany; Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Karolina Talar
Institute for Neuromodulation and Neurotechnology, University Hospital and University of Tübingen, Germany
Alireza Gharabaghi
Institute for Neuromodulation and Neurotechnology, University Hospital and University of Tübingen, Germany
Hubert Preissl
IDM/fMEG Center of the Helmholtz Center Munich at the University of Tübingen, Division of Diabetology, Endocrinology and Nephrology, Department of Internal Medicine, German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD), Tübingen, Germany
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.
