Magnetoencephalographic Signatures of Conscious Processing Before Birth
| Autor: | Lorenzo Semeia, Magdalene Weiss, Franziska Schleger, Julia Moser, Katrin Sippel, Hubert Preissl |
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| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
Male
Neurophysiology and neuropsychology Brain development Consciousness Cognitive Neuroscience media_common.quotation_subject Auditory oddball Brain maturation Engram 050105 experimental psychology 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Pregnancy Cognitive development Humans Medicine 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences Fetal MEG ComputingMethodologies_COMPUTERGRAPHICS Original Research media_common Fetus business.industry QP351-495 Hierarchical rule learning 05 social sciences Infant Newborn Brain Magnetoencephalography Cognition medicine.disease Autonomic nervous system Cross-Sectional Studies Brain Maturation Cognitive Development Fetal Meg Hierarchical Rule Learning embryonic structures Evoked Potentials Auditory Gestation Female Psychology business Neuroscience 030217 neurology & neurosurgery Fetal magnetoencephalography |
| Zdroj: | Dev. Cogn. Neurosci . 49:100964 (2021) Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Vol 49, Iss, Pp 100964-(2021) Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience |
| Popis: | Graphical abstract 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. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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