Can the Fetus feel pain?
The International Association bfor the Study of Pain (IASP) defines pain as an unpleasant sensory and
emotional experience associated with, or resembling, that is associated with actual or potential tissue
damage.
Also, pain has a learned psychological aspect, too as the study shows that premature babies who had
already been exposed to painful stimulation showed evidence of being more stressed when the same
procedure was repeated than those of the same gestational age who did not have prior experience.
Until the late 1980s, there was a prevailing belief in the medical community that even newborns couldn't
feel pain due to their underdeveloped brains.
Today, many major medical organizations believe that a fetus is capable of feeling pain from 24 to 25
weeks.
At 24 weeks of development, the fetuses respond to Noxious stimuli with increased heart rate and blood
pressure.
At 30 weeks, fetuses have brain activity in areas associated with pain processing.
The ability of a fetus to experience pain and awareness is influenced by the development of the nervous
system.
The cortex, the outer layer of the brain, is a crucial part of the brain involved in the perception of pain.
the thalamus, another brain structure, serves as a relay station for sensory information (like pain) to the
cortex.
In the early stages of fetal development, the cortex,subcortical areas such as the brain stem and
thalamus are not fully mature, and synaptic connections are still forming. Therefore, in the early stages
of development, the brain doesn't have the necessary hardware and software to support conscious pain
perception.
On the other hand, there are some theories that a fetus could feel pain perhaps as early as the first
trimester, which is up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.
They believe the neural pathways necessary for pain perception start to be seen in the fetal brain as
early as 7-8 weeks of gestation, and pain receptors and spinal cord connections are linked to the brain by
12-15 weeks.
However, evidence indicates that the possibility of pain perception before 28 weeks of gestation is
unlikely. It is now recognized that pain perception requires a comprehensive network rather than the
presence or absence of a specific region or set of connections. This has been termed the human pain
connectome.
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