Professor Maria Quotations

We have been able to objectively stand back and measure activity in the pre-term infant brain in response to a noxious or painful stimulus. That's never been done before. Anyone working with pre-term babies would feel intuitively that they're likely to feel pain - but before now we didn't know.

Now that we have this scientific, objective measure of pain, we'll be able to assess pain-relieving therapies much more precisely. It is certainly something we need to be aware of. It is another good reason for treating the pain and alleviating it at this very early stage when they are so vulnerable.

Beforehand, although we could assume it, we did not know for sure that these babies could feel pain. These babies' brains are so immature that it was difficult to genuinely know that the pain was going to their brain.

This is the first time we have actually measured pain activity in the human brain.