Assessing consciousness in infants

As part of the Distinguished Lectures promoted by the Padova Neuroscience Center – PNC of the University of Padua, on Monday 14 September 2026 Ghislaine Dehaene (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Université Paris-Saclay) will give thetalk “Assessing consciousness in infants”.

How can we study consciousness in infants when no verbal report is possible? In their first months of life, human infants develop remarkably sophisticated cognitive capacities — they learn their native language, recognize their parents, refine their numerical intuitions and
perception of the world. But are they aware of what they perceive?

One promising approach is to rely on the neural signatures of conscious perception established in adults: a global increase of activity in a distributed network including frontal cortex, together with top-down amplification of sensory processing. This framework offers two complementary questions. Anatomically: at what age is the developing cortical architecture mature enough to support this type of response? Functionally: can we adapt adult paradigms — masking, attentional blink, rapid serial visual presentation — to elicit similar patterns in infants?

The speaker will present EEG data obtained in the first months of life to illustrate this approach, and discuss its implications for our understanding of when and how conscious experience emerges in the developing brain.

The seminar will be held in English, and it is open to professors, researchers, lecturers, Ph.D. students, postdoctoral fellows and grant holders.

Attendance is free as long as seats are available.