Claudia Passos-Ferreira

One innovative experiment in neuroscience is the audible paradigm.

This is a test of how our brain reacts when something unexpected happens.

I love this paradigm, and here's how it works.

Imagine repeatedly hearing

the same sequence of sounds.

Beep, beep, beep, boop.

Beep, beep, beep, boop.

Beep, beep, beep, boop.

Suddenly, this familiar pattern is interrupted by a different sequence.

Beep, beep, beep, beep.

Instantly, your brain detects the surprise, produces a measurable brain signal called the pre-300 wave.

This audible response to an unexpected sequence of sounds only happens

when an individual is conscious.

People in deep sleep don't have it, people in commas don't have it, but newborn babies do.

The neuroscientist Linda Han has found that when babies are just a few days old, they show the same type of brain activity in response to this audible sequence of sounds.

What this suggests is that right from birth, infants might be truly experiencing conscious perceptions and conscious expectations.

Research has also looked for consciousness through patterns of attention in the brain.

In conscious adults' brains, different types of networks alternate their activity when we switch our attention between the external world and our internal thoughts.

You know how it is.

You might be doing this right now.