About this event

The conference will explore current issues about the development of consciousness in infants, with particular attention to recent work on neural and behavioral markers of consciousness. The aim is to bring together neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers to gain a better understanding of conscious awareness in infants. 

The conference will explore questions such as

• When does consciousness emerge in human infants?
• What do theories of consciousness predict about infant consciousness?   
• ⁠What evidence helps us detect consciousness in infants?
• What neurological and behavioral markers can be used to assess consciousness in infants?
• When do specific aspects of consciousness, such as self-awareness and a sense of agency, begin manifesting in infants?
• ⁠Is there a developmental border or a critical period for consciousness?
• ⁠What is the best methodology to investigate consciousness in infants?
• ⁠Are fetuses conscious, and if so, at what stage?
• ⁠What are the contents of a newborn baby’s consciousness? 
• ⁠What are the moral implications of the emergence of consciousness?
• What are the implications of developmental milestones in consciousness for early childhood education and care?
• How do issues about infant consciousness connect to issues about disorders of consciousness in non-human animals, and in AI systems?

Coverage in Science magazine: Consciousness before birth? Imaging studies explore the possibility

Registration

Registration for in-person attendance is now closed.

Livestream/Recording

We will have a live stream via a Zoom webinar (without hybrid audience participation) and will make recordings available after the conference. The Zoom address for the live stream is: https://nyu.zoom.us/s/92619333320.

To report technical issues with the Zoom, please contact Jack at jhm378@nyu.edu.

Program

Friday, February 28th 

9:00-9:30am • Coffee/Check-in

9:30-10:30am • Keynote 1: Lorina Naci – Typical and disrupted brain mechanism for conscious awareness in full-term and preterm infants

10:30-10:50am • Coffee Break

10:50am-12:50pm • Symposium 1: Neural Correlates of Infant Consciousness

– Topun Austin: Investigating the role of sleep and social touch on functional connectivity and socio-emotional development in the newborn infant

– Sid Kouider: Reflective mechanisms of perception and metacognition in infants

– Hamza Kebiri: Developmental thalamic functional connectivity and its potential implications for early neonatal consciousness

– Yusuke Nakashima: Immature recurrent processing in early infancy revealed by visual backward masking

12:50-2:00pm • Lunch Break

2:00-3:00pm • Keynote 2: Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz, Assessing consciousness in infants

3:00-4:00pm • Poster Session 1 / Coffee break

– Jessica Babcock: Prenatal intersubjectivity: A phenomenological analysis of fetal development

– Marianne Broeker (& Paul Azzopardi): Impact of unconscious processing onto perception and narrative system in infants: Presentation of a research too

– Juan Ardia Cifuentes: Functional connectivity and fetal consciousness

– Nikolaus Kennelly: A problem for cross-species comparisons of ontogenetic flexibility

– Florian Heinen (& Jörg Noller): Child consciousness and digitalization – A new point of cultural intersection

– Jack Spinella: A paradox of infant agency?

– Markus Tunte: Developing interoception: On the perception of bodily signals in infants and caregivers

– Qiyuan Zeng (and Darinka Trübutschek, Lucia Melloni): Event segmentation and subjective time perception: An inroad to infant consciousness

4:00-6:00pm • Symposium 2: Pre-Natal Consciousness

– Anna Ciaunica: The Forgotten Body: The Co-Embodied Origins of the Human Mind

– William Graf: The neurobiological requisites of fetal sentience

– Joel Frohlich: Do fetuses perceive individual rapid stimuli? Evidence from MEG frequency tagging

– Niccolo Negro: An analogical abductive argument against foetal consciousness

6:00-7:00pm • Reception

Saturday, March 1st

9:00-9:30am • Coffee

9:30-10:30am • Keynote 3: Tim Bayne, Babies, bees and bots: From theories to markers and back again

10:30-10:50am • Coffee Break

10:50am-12:50pm • Symposium 3: Infant Color Perception

– Ned Block: Non-conceptual color perception is more certain for children than adults

– Richard Brown Higher-Order Theories and Infant Color Consciousness

– Kathleen Akins: Color bit-by-bit: The gradualist approach to color vision development

– Yusuke Moriguchi: Comparing color qualia structures in young children versus adults

12:50-2:00pm • Lunch Break

2:00-4:00pm • Symposium 4: Development and Theories

– Nicholas Turk-Browne: Learning and memory in the infant brain

– Cécile Gal: Do infants’ early error-monitoring and metacognition support their emerging self-awareness?

– Thomas Varley: The emergence of a synergistic scaffold in the brains of infants

– Claudia Passos: Infant consciousness: Whether, when, where, what, how?

4:00-5:00pm • Poster Session 2 / Coffee break

(see poster list under poster session 1)

5:00-6:30 pm • Panel Discussion: Susan Carey, David Chalmers, Matthew Liao, Moriah Thomason

Conference Organizers

This event is co-hosted by the NYU Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness and the NYU Center for Bioethics, with support from the NYU Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy.  The main organizer is Claudia Passos-Ferreira, with help from Ned Block, David Chalmers, and Matthew Liao.