Summary: Researchers propose a new approach to determine when consciousness emerges in infancy. Their suggestion, based on identifying markers of consciousness in adults and tracking when these markers appear in babies’ development, offers a potential pathway to understand this long-standing question.

The approach includes looking for specific behaviors or brain activation patterns known to correlate with consciousness in adults and then finding when these begin in infants. By identifying and grouping a broad range of markers present in early and late development, the researchers aim to pinpoint the emergence of consciousness more accurately. This method could provide insights into the complex process of becoming conscious, despite challenges like the inability of infants to communicate their experiences.

A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford has challenged previously held views that brain preservation in the archaeological record is extremely rare. The team carried out the largest study to date of the global archaeological literature about preserved human brains to compile an archive that exceeds 20-fold the number of brains previously compiled. The findings have been published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Neuroscientists have taken a step closer to understanding those moments when our thoughts seem to vanish into thin air, a phenomenon known as “mind blanking.” A study published in The Journal of Neuroscience reveals that when people report having no identifiable thoughts — mind blanking — there is a marked reduction in brain activity across several key regions. This intriguing discovery contributes to broader conversations about consciousness and our ability to report experiences.

The authors behind the new study sought to better understand a relatively understudied area of cognitive neuroscience: the phenomenon of mind blanking, where individuals find themselves unable to recount their immediate-past mental content. Unlike mental states with reportable content, such as daydreaming or engaging in a task, mind blanking represents a unique state of consciousness that lacked thorough neural characterization.

“In the past 10 years, I have researched human unconscious states where communication is restricted (post-comatose disorders),” said corresponding author Athena Demertzi, a tenured research associate of the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research and director of the Physiology of Cognition Lab at the University of Liège, Belgium.