What are newborn babies thinking? Clues from MRI

摘要

FH Bradley famously proposed that "the one knowledge worth having is to know one's own mind" [1]. Popular beliefs maintain that the newborn infant has a limited capacity for 'thought', largely owing to the restricted degree to which a newborn is seen to actively interact with its environment and, furthermore, as a result of our inability to remember experiences during our own infancy. One could go further to argue that the medical profession in particular maintains a degree of selective blindness with respect to the issue, as it is often preferable not to consider the long-term psychological effects of an invasive clinical intervention performed at such an early stage in life. Philosophers and psychologists have long debated the question; Plato and, later, Rene Descartes (1596-1650) suggested that all infants have an innate collection of ideas and knowledge from birth, in sharp contrast to the 'tabula rasa' (blank slate) view proposed by John Locke (1632-1704) [2].