Remarkable research involving collaborators and an employee of the DRCMR has been published in the very prestigious journal Science. Sid Kouider(1,2), Carsten Stahlhut(2) and Sofie Gelskov(1,3) has in collaboration with French scientists studied the development of consciousness in babies.

This is obviously a challenging feat. From studies of blindsight patients, for example, it is known that complex responses to stimuli can happen without the patients being aware of these. Infants exhibit complex behaviour, but at which age do they become consciously aware?

This question may not be answerable, but the recent study represents a large step in that direction. Sid Kouider and co-workers used electrodes attached to the skin to record brain activity of 5 to 15 month old infants subject to brief presentation of photos with faces at various levels of (in)visibility. The children were found to have brain activity similar to that of adults although with a significant delay. Importantly, such stimuli give very different electrode responses for adults, depending on whether they are consciously perceived or not. The same detailed patterns of response were found for the children, which is a strong indication that also children may become  consciously aware if the stimuli are sufficiently clear (unlike blindsight patients, for example, who see and respond, but do not become aware).

Congratulations to Sid, Carsten, Sofie and the other co-authors on a very interesting and well-conducted study.

Affiliations:

1. Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Paris, France.
2. Section for Cognitive Systems, Department of Informatics and Mathematical Modeling, Technical University of Denmark.
3. Danish Research Center for Magnetic Resonance (DRCMR), Copenhagen University Hospital, Hvidovre, Denmark.