Claudia Passos-Ferreira

You focus your attention on the speaker for a while, and then you daydream for a while.

It turns out that infants do the same sort of thing.

The neuroscientist Florin Nanatti recently observed the same type of alternation between these networks in newborn brains.

This suggests that this switch on the focus of internal and external awareness are present right from birth.

There is also evidence from gaps in attention.

When our minds intensely focus on one thing, it usually becomes blind for something that happens immediately afterward.

We call this phenomenon attentional blink.

Infants experience this phenomenon too, but in slow motion.

At three months old,

Infants take near a full second to shift their attention from one visual cue to another, compared to adults that can manage this shift much faster.

Amazingly, infants show the same type of brain response when this happens, strongly hinting

They are actively experiencing their environment.

Researchers have also found relevant brain patterns in premature infants, which makes you wonder, could consciousness begin before birth?

This is a really important question.

I told you earlier how scientists applied the Audible test to newborns.

Well?

They applied the same test to late-term fetuses around 35 weeks into pregnancy.

The results were striking.

Fetus shows the same type of brain response as we found in newborns.

So even before birth,