Magnetoencephalographic Signatures of Hierarchical Rule Learning in Newborns

Moser, Julia; Schleger, Franziska; Weiss, Martin; Sippel, Katrin; Dehaene‐Lambertz, Ghislaine; Preißl, Hubert

doi:10.1101/2020.04.28.065482

Cited by 6 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 44 publications

(59 reference statements)

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“…For the above reasons, successful detection of second-order or "global" rule violations, evidenced by large signal deflections in the trial-averaged event related field (ERF), may be taken as evidence of consciousness, as was recently inferred in studies of fetuses and neonates conducted at the SARA site in Tübingen (Moser et al, 2021(Moser et al, , 2020. These responses were only reliably detected in fetuses starting from 35 weeks gestational age, and the amplitude of the response was modulated by heart rate variability, i.e., arousal, suggesting that fetuses who were in a quiet sleep state during the experiment were unconscious and thus unable to be "surprised" (in a Bayesian sense) by the deviant tones.…”

Section: Possible Evidence Of Fetal Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Although the preceding studies provide evidence of learning and perceptual discrimination in infants and fetuses, they are consistent with a lack of perceptual awareness. However, recent studies using a hierarchical learning "local-global" paradigm (Moser et al, 2021(Moser et al, , 2020 do appear to provide specific evidence of perceptual consciousness in both newborn infants and fetuses from 35 weeks gestation. This paradigm, based on auditory prediction errors, has already been validated as a marker of consciousness in adult neurological patients (Bekinschtein et al, 2009;King et al, 2013;Sitt et al, 2014), and it can also distinguish general anesthesia from consciousness in neurosurgery patients (Nourski et al, 2018) and macaque monkeys (Uhrig et al, 2016).…”

Section: Possible Evidence Of Fetal Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Conventionally, PCI relies on estimating both the temporal and spatial complexity of the cortical response to a perturbation after source reconstruction. However, this may not be possible with infant or fetal MEG data, which generally requires averaging across spatially distributed sensors (Moser et al, 2020). Although estimates of spontaneous (i.e., non-perturbational) LZc from individual MEG/EEG sensors can be useful for inferring consciousness in adults (Toker et al, 2022;Zhang et al, 2001), it is dubious whether single channel LZc is sufficient in the context of perturbational complexity, which is conventionally defined as spatiotemporal complexity.…”

Section: Computing Complexity From Low Snr Meg Recordingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Not with a “zap” but with a “beep”: measuring the origins of perinatal experience

Frohlich¹,

Bayne²,

Dallavecchia³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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When does the mind begin? Infant psychology is mysterious in part because we cannot remember our first months of life, nor can we directly communicate with infants. Even more speculative is the possibility of mental life prior to birth. The question of when consciousness, or subjective experience, begins in human development thus remains incompletely answered, though boundaries can be set using current knowledge from developmental neurobiology and recent investigations of the perinatal brain. Here, we offer our perspective on how the development of a sensory perturbation complexity index (sPCI) based on auditory (“beep-and-zip”) or visual (“flash-and-zip”) cortical perturbations in place of electromagnetic perturbations (“zap-and-zip”) might be used to address this question. First, we discuss recent studies of perinatal cognition and consciousness using techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and, in particular, magnetoencephalography (MEG). While newborn infants are the archetypal subjects for studying early human development, researchers may also benefit from fetal studies, as the womb is, in many respects, a more controlled environment than the cradle. The earliest possible timepoint when subjective experience might begin is likely the establishment of thalamocortical connectivity at 26 weeks gestation, as the thalamocortical system is necessary for consciousness according to most theoretical frameworks. To infer at what age and in which behavioral states consciousness might emerge following the initiation of thalamocortical pathways, we advocate for the development of the sPCI to estimate the perinatal brain’s state of consciousness.

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Section: Possible Evidence Of Fetal Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Possible Evidence Of Fetal Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Computing Complexity From Low Snr Meg Recordingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Not with a “zap” but with a “beep”: measuring the origins of perinatal experience

Frohlich¹,

Bayne²,

Dallavecchia³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…In the third trimester of gestation, foetuses show signs of some kind of consciousness. To assess this, researchers introduced an auditory paradigm for the investigation of memory traces over different time scales, the so called "local-global" paradigm [103]. The local-global paradigm consists of a sequence of tones which can either contain only identical tones or end with a different tone.…”

Section: Development Of Foetal Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foetal pain and anaesthesia during prenatal surgery

Bellieni¹

2022

Clin. Exp. Obstet. Gynecol.

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Objectives: Foetal surgery is a relatively new branch of medicine; the health providers involved are currently wondering what kind of anaesthesia should be provided to the foetuses. In the last few years, new advances have been reported on foetal sensoriality and capability for feeling pain; meanwhile alerts have been issued on the risks of prolonged anaesthesia in the early infancy. Aim of this paper is reviewing the main data on foetal pain, to be aware of which is the time in pregnancy when it is likely to be felt. The secondary aim is to point out which are the anaesthetics and analgesics appropriate for prenatal surgery. Mechanism: A review of the literature published in the last 20 years in the field of fetal sensoriality and fetal sergery has been carried out; the most pertinent papers have been retrieved, and their conclusions are here summarized and analysed. Findings in brief: Pain can be felt by the human fetus in the second half of pregnancy: data of physiological and behavioural studies show it with increasing evidence, as long as the gestational age increases. With regard to the best anaesthesia in this case, it seems that the mere anaesthetics given to the mother, though apparently sufficient during laparoscopic surgery, are not sufficient to anesthetize the foetus during open surgery; here some references are given for the best and safest foetal direct analgesic treatment. Conclusions: Surgeons should approach carefully fetal surgery, according with the latest findings in this field.

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“…There is evidence for early sensitivity to the temporal organization of tone sequences in infants. Electroencephalography (EEG) and Magnetoencephalography in sleeping newborns show sensitivity to the onset, offset, and tempo of auditory sequences ( Háden et al, 2015 ), the omission of metrically important tones in a rhythmic pattern ( Winkler et al, 2009 ), and hierarchical regularities ( Moser, 2020 ). In addition, infants in the first year of life show neural entrainment to the beat and meter of rhythmic patterns ( Cirelli et al, 2016 ) and detect violations of meter in an auditory sequence ( Zhao and Kuhl, 2016 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%