Assessing consciousness in human infants

Schedule
Monday, January 25, 2021
11:00 UTC
Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz

Prof

CNRS

Host: ICM Paris Brain Institute

Event Information

Host

ICM Paris Brain Institute

Duration

70 minutes

Abstract

In a few months, human infants develop complex capacities in numerous cognitive domains. They learn their native language, recognize their parents, refine their numerical capacities and their perception of the world around them but are they conscious and how can we study consciousness when no verbal report is possible? One way to approach this question is to rely on the neural responses correlated with conscious perception in adults (i.e. a global increase of activity in notably frontal regions with top-down amplification of the sensory levels). We can thus study at what age the developing anatomical architecture might be mature enough to allow this type of responses, but moreover we can use similar experimental paradigms than in adults in which we expect to observe a similar pattern of functional responses.

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