Emergent Consciousness: Unraveling the Newborn Mind
Tabula Rasa
The mind of a newborn offers a treasure trove of neuro-physiological activity in the rawest of forms, the kind of activity that prompts one to wonder how it’s exactly possible for such a mind to interact with its surrounding environment in the way that it does.
It’s something we all go through in our first and last moments of existence - bookends of our lives during which our neuro-physiological impulses steer the ship more than our consciously-discerning capacity. From these phases, we can catch quick glimpses of our raw and unmolded design; our default modes of an analog system at baseline existence.
More than anything, the newborn phase lends an ode to the fact that the brain is a masterfully-crafted switchboard, prompted by ancient genetic instructions encoded in the DNA, and carried out via some wildly harmonic neurochemical synchronizations.
Microscopic, but no less mighty, proteins are at the helm of this switchboard, charged with building the newborn's perceptive navigability through its surrounding world.
Proteins and Prototypes
From the moment that a baby takes its first breath, the symphony of protein-driven neurochemical processes are responsible for every flicker of emotion, every grasp of the hand, every cry and every grin.
Enzymes, the molecular locksmiths, make possible the deployment of neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine — chemical echoes amongst brain cells with blueprints for further development, working to build a neuroplastic matrix of adaptive intelligence.
The emergent lexicon of the mind is instinctively primed and ambitiously designed to interact with reality in ever-successive ways, ways emblematic of our existential prerogative and potential.
Archaic Alignments
Curiously, the story isn’t exactly limited to a solo venture undertaken by the emergent consciousness; there’s a dance between the internal and external worlds.
The newborn is ephemerally and deeply connected to the surrounding rhythms of existence.
[Sustenance & Milk Production]
Within a few days of birth, the baby will look to influence the mother’s milk production via an aggressive series of cluster feedings that seem physiologically counter-intuitive. The interaction reflects a bilateral loop between mother and child, driven by internal genetic programming and external environmental feedback.
[Sleep/Wake Cycling]
In the womb, a newborn’s sleep-wake cycle is influenced by the mother’s melatonin levels and daily rhythms. After birth, the circadian rhythm beats louder, prompting the baby to adjust to the natural light-dark cycle of the external world. This process is governed by the refinement of the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the brain, which eventually synchronizes internal and external cyclings. The pineal gland will also begin to produce melatonin, regulating sleep in response to darkness.
[Tailored Nourishment & Immunological Responsivity]
Through retrograde milk flow (when the infants saliva is transferred back into the mother's body through the nipple), the mother's immune system assesses the baby’s needs. An infection of any kind will, for instance, prompt the mother’s body to adjust the composition of the milk, producing antibodies, leukocytes, and other immune cells.
[Sensory Navigation & Thermoregulation]
Sensory and thermoregulatory systems also undergo rapid refinement as the newborn mind encounters new stimuli. Vision sharpens amidst increasing tracking ability; a increasingly astute familiarity to voices and tactile experiences are all feeding information back to the protein pilots, whose neurochemical processing seem not only bewilderingly efficient but bemusingly enigmatic.
Modus Operandi
It all seems to transcend our usual paradigms of existence: time, space, consciousness, even physics. The biochemical designs amidst the evolving neuronal networks are as formidable a work of art as our cosmos tends to be.
From its form and function we can eschew a number of other streams of revelation: we can see how every generation is more subjectively engaged within its time and age; why we're not only wildly different but eerily similar from civilizations to locations; how our advanced dispositions are pre-determined (or how they’re not); how and why we’re able to pursue goals or meaning; how we do and don’t operate in similarity to all other organisms.
It also prompts us to consider the potential associated with deepening our understandings with respect to neuroplastcity or behaviour patterning; of leveraging the workings of our serotonergic or dopaminergic (reward-system) deployments and dispositions; all done to allow us to play with possibilities and form subconscious or supraconscious perspectives that reorganize our discerning operating systems.
From a fleeting but powerful glimpse into the first moments of a consciousness interacting with reality — a spark out of the dark that quickly vanishes — we can stand to gain a lot of insights into the wondrous power and potential of our consciousness.