A groundbreaking study by University College London has revealed that even newborn and preterm infants experience pain long before they can fully understand it.

Researchers analyzed brain scans from 372 infants, many born before 32 weeks, to track the development of pain-processing networks in the brain.

They discovered that the sensory-discriminative network, which helps detect and locate pain, matures around 34 to 36 weeks of gestation.

By 36 to 38 weeks, the affective-motivational network, which adds emotional unpleasantness to pain, also becomes functional. However, the cognitive-evaluative network, responsible for interpreting and understanding the pain experience, doesn’t develop until after 42 weeks.

This means even full-term newborns can feel pain but cannot fully process or understand it.

The findings explain why premature babies do not habituate to repeated painful procedures and emphasize the need for specially tailored pain management strategies in neonatal care to better protect these highly vulnerable infants.