Neonatal Consciousness – What is it like (if anything) to be a newborn baby?

Five weeks after the nail-biting experience of having our twins born two months early, my wife and I have now settled into a routine of regular visits to the neonatal intensive care unit, where our little boy and girl try to complete the remainder of their gestation in perspex boxes. And so, as they lie there, mostly peacefully but with occasional myoclonic jerks, hiccups and tentative openings of the eyes, I find myself wondering what, if anything could be passing through their little minds. Do they even have minds? Are they even capable of consciousness at such an early stage of development? Do newborn babies have consciousness? Somewhat like a river, consciousness seems an intuitively simple concept to grasp, until you actually try to grasp it, understand it, or look for its source. In fact, the more I  have read of this fascinating topic over the last few years, the harder it seems to pin down. For hundreds of years, philosophers from Descartes and Kant to modern-day luminaries such as Daniel Dennett have hunted for definitions and possible explanations for this common, familiar, yet elusive quarry. More recently, with leaps in our understanding of the human brain, experimental psychologists and other cognitive scientists such as Stephen Pinker, Bruce Hood and Sam Harris have joined the fray. While not all such scientists agree on the exact nature of consciousness, what extent of the animal kingdom has it, or how amenable it is to academic study, they do mostly seem to share the following common ground: Consciousness can be loosely defined...