Do newborns hear sounds and are aware of pain? In the past, boys undergoing circumcision were often not given anesthesia, in part because it was thought that their brains were too immature to be aware of pain. Even today, much remains unknown. Babies cannot communicate to us what they are experiencing, so it is difficult to know what they are aware of.
Recently, neuroscientists evidence This suggests that newborns have a conscious awareness of the world: when newborns encounter certain surprising stimuli, their brains respond in a strikingly similar way to the way conscious adult brains respond.
One way to investigate this is to use the oddball paradigm.
Source: www.newscientist.com
