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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: SF Chinese (ID:kexuejiaodian), author: SF

For years, people have been exploring when babies begin to sense what is relevant to them, that is, when humans become self-aware. Recently, a study published in Scientific Reports shows that at the age of 4 months, babies are self-aware and aware of the proximity of objects around them.

Signs of self-awareness: when looking for a location and injection in space, after the nurse raises the syringe, we almost know when it will fall, and we will be prepared in advance not to move or turn around; when we look at the traffic, we will probably know when it is safe to cross the road, and we can make a smooth judgment even if we have not been hit by a car.

In the experience of the combination of visual and tactile stimuli, tactile stimuli do not occur in many cases, or we predict them before tactile stimuli occur. We seem to be particularly sensitive to such cross-sensory things and have an inexplicable ability to predict. This ability to locate yourself in space and realize how you will interact with the space around you has always attracted the attention of scientists.

In the latest study, researchers found that humans can integrate visual and tactile stimuli from as late as 4 months old, and even if they do not focus on visual stimuli, it will also be affected in subsequent somatosensory processing.

Newborn self-awareness grew rapidly within a year in this study, the researchers showed a sphere (equivalent to visual stimulation) close to or away from 4-month-old babies (with a sample size of 20, nine of them girls) in the lower half of the screen. When the sphere on the screen was closest to the baby, the researchers applied a slight vibration to the baby's hand (the equivalent of a tactile stimulus) and measured the baby's brain activity.

In the course of the experiment, the researchers made sure that the baby focused on the object at the top of the screen and did not stare at the moving sphere.

In subsequent experiments, the researchers made no connection between visual and tactile stimuli in time or space, and observed the baby's response to visual and tactile stimuli.

Studies have shown that when the sphere is close to the baby, the baby's brain activity increases. If the baby receives tactile stimulation as the sphere approaches, the baby's brain activity will be more active, and the baby's hand will try to swing toward the sphere.

The results show that in the first few months of life, although babies do not yet reach for things, the brain has established connections between multi-sensory systems, and they can sense the space around them. and understand how they interact with the space around them.

At the same time, the researchers also experimented with 8-month-old babies (20 samples, of which 10 were girls). Like 4-month-olds, 8-month-olds become active when the sphere is close, but unlike 4-month-olds, 8-month-olds do not respond strongly to tactile stimuli. You will be surprised when the sphere is far away but has a slight vibration.

This shows that with the passage of time, babies have a more complex cognitive experience of the environment.

Is self-awareness inborn? People need this ability for most of their lives-to sense their position in space with a multi-sensory system and to predict the proximity or distance of other objects. For years, people have been exploring when babies will be able to sense things related to them.

Other studies have shown that even newborns can distinguish visual events based on the distance of the surrounding objects from them, and they tend to be close to moving objects. At the same time, studies have shown that early in the first year, babies are sensitive to occasional events that change in time and space and have visual, auditory and tactile multi-sensory stimuli.

In this study, researchers found signs of self-awareness in early developmental babies, raising another question: how much of the ability to integrate multi-sensory information is acquired and how much is inborn?

References:

Https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-45897-4

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