(NYT) – By pinpointing when it begins in young humans, scientists hope to better understand what consciousness is, and how it arises, in all of us.

Amid all the uncertainty, there’s one fact that everyone can agree on. In each of our lives, there was a time when our brains were still too rudimentary to support consciousness, and there was a time when that changed. Even if we can’t say when babies gain consciousness, Dr. Austin said, “one thing we can be certain of is that they will become conscious.”

In recent years, Dr. Austin and other researchers have zeroed in on that transition. They are using new kinds of brain-scanning technology to study the brains of babies as never before, giving infants not only the blip tests, but even investigating what babies experience before birth. By determining when consciousness fully blooms, perhaps they can advance our understanding of how it works, and what it does, in all of us. (Read More)