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Magnetoencephalographic signatures of conscious processing before birth.
Dev. Cogn. Neurosci . 49:100964 (2021)
The concept of fetal consciousness is a widely discussed topic. In this study, we applied a hierarchical rule learning paradigm to investigate the possibility of fetal conscious processing during the last trimester of pregnancy. We used fetal magnetoencephalography, to assess fetal brain activity in 56 healthy fetuses between gestational week 25 and 40, during an auditory oddball paradigm containing first- and second-order regularities. The comparison of fetal brain responses towards standard and deviant tones revealed that the investigated fetuses show signs of hierarchical rule learning, and thus the formation of a memory trace for the second-order regularity. This ability develops over the course of the last trimester of gestation, in accordance with processes in physiological brain development and was only reliably present in fetuses older than week 35 of gestation. Analysis of fetal autonomic nervous system activity replicates findings in newborns, showing importance of activity state for cognitive processes. On the whole, our results support the assumption that fetuses in the last weeks of gestation are capable of consciously processing stimuli that reach them from outside the womb.
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Publication type
Article: Journal article
Document type
Scientific Article
Keywords
Brain Maturation ; Cognitive Development ; Consciousness ; Fetal Meg ; Hierarchical Rule Learning; Fetal; Responses; Discrimination; Emergence; Fetuses
ISSN (print) / ISBN
1878-9293
e-ISSN
1878-9307
Quellenangaben
Volume: 49,
Article Number: 100964
Publisher
Elsevier
Publishing Place
The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford Ox5 1gb, Oxon, England
Non-patent literature
Publications
Reviewing status
Peer reviewed
Grants
International Max Planck Research School for the Mechanisms of Mental Function and Dysfunction (IMPRSMMFD)
German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
FET Open Luminous project (H2020 FETOPEN-2014-2015-RIA), European Union's Horizon 2020 research and training program 2014-2018
German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
FET Open Luminous project (H2020 FETOPEN-2014-2015-RIA), European Union's Horizon 2020 research and training program 2014-2018