"Specialised nerve terminals, nociceptors, are likely to detect surgical tissue damage from early in fetal life (around 10 weeks for the skin and 13 weeks for the internal organs). These nociceptors gradually mature over the next 6–8 weeks and the strength of their signals increases over fetal life. The presence of nociceptors is necessary for perception of acute surgical pain and so pain is clearly not possible before the nociceptors first appear at 10 weeks. The presence of nociceptors alone, however, is not a sufficient condition for pain experience. The electrical activity that is generated at nociceptor terminals by tissue damage must also be conducted along nerve fibres from the skin and into the spinal cord and brain. It is only when the brain receives information about the damage that the fetus can have any potential of awareness of it."