Do Babies Have Consciousness? | Psychology Today

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What it might be like to see the world as a baby.

Source: Do Babies Have Consciousness?

This is fascinating! Joel Frohlich, Ph.D, and a team of neuroscientists (see references below the article) recently published a paper in the journal Trends in Cognitive Science suggesting that most likely even 3rd trimester fetuses as well as newborn are likely to have consciousness that even might be capable of rudimentary stimuli processing thus leading to feats like being able to distinguish vowels even in foreign languages and with hearing generally being more advanced than visual processing.

I’ve always “felt” and maintained that newborn children or even fetuses got to be able of this form of perception and processing seeing as I recall a number of “images” for lack of a better word in my early infant weeks when relegated to pediatric hospital for some digestive issues after birth and a life threatening situation ensuing from it. One of the co-authors or the paper, Dr. Lorina Naci, Associate Professor at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, who leads the Consciousness and Cognition Group which conducted this research, explained:

“Our findings suggest that newborns can integrate sensory and developing cognitive responses into coherent conscious experiences to understand the actions of others and plan their own responses.”

Dr. Lorina Naci, Associate Professor at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland

The researchers find it entirely likely that given the nature of dreams in adults as often being somewhat incoherent and bizarre, even newborn babies or as early as in the womb might be capable of dreams!

To my ears these findings could also be strong evidence for explaining accounts from people claiming to have conscious recollection of a “life before life” phase, usually in the context of near death experiences and | or purported reincarnation memories. But I might entirely be overinterpreting this. For now, their studies seem to indicate that consciousness starts a lot sooner than previously believed in medical and academic circles. But I don’t mean to give it all away. See for yourself, if so inclined.