Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagFetus (mind and brain development)

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Twins with New Baby on the Way

What Is the Human Mind Like Before Birth?

Researchers stress that the unborn child’s brain is in a rapid, ongoing, and little understood state of development

Some have addressed the question of the prenatal mind by trying to determine when various parts of the brain develop. The difficulty with that, as neuroscientist Mark Solms and neurosurgeon Michael Egnor have noted, is that it’s not clear that there is a “seat” of consciousness in the brain. If it is a human brain at all, it is developing human consciousness, in the same way that a kitten brain is developing cat consciousness. At any rate, human consciousness is a “Hard Problem with no special location in the brain. Unborn babies, like very young born ones, spend most of their time asleep, as neuroscientist Christof Koch has pointed out: Invasive experiments in rat and lamb pups and observational studies Read More ›