One thing I’ve always been fascinated with is the fact really young children don’t seem to remember a big chunk of their formative years.
My earliest memory, for instance, is when I was about three and I was sat in our front garden putting soil and worms in a bucket while my dad mowed the lawn.
Everything that happened prior to that? Well, it obviously happened but I have zero recollection of it. And lots of people would say the same thing.
But why is this?
When we’re born, our brain isn’t full developed and it continues to grow and change massively in those first few years of life.
For example, a baby’s brain is about a quarter of its adult size, but by the age of two, it’ll be three-quarters of its final size. Amazing, right? And as our brain develops, our memory does too.
A recent study published in the journal Science used brain scans of 26 children aged four months to two years old to understand whether babies actually form memories.
Children were shown a picture of a new face, object or scene for two seconds, according to Nature, and were then shown it again 60 seconds later.
If a baby had a lot of activity in the hippocampus (which plays a crucial role in forming new memories) when looking at a new image, the scientists found they would then spend longer looking at it a second time.
The theory goes that because babies tend to look at familiar things for longer, it’s likely they were remembering what they had seen.
If babies do in fact form memories then, researchers suggested, it’s likely that the inability to remember those early years could be caused by difficulties recalling memories.
Study co-author Tristan Yates, a neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York City, told Nature: “One really cool possibility is that the memories are actually still there in adulthood. It’s just that we’re not able to access them.”
Why might we have trouble recalling memories?
According to scientists at The University of Queensland, when we’re younger a part of our hippocampus goes into overdrive, making neurons really quickly. Yet as we age, this slows down.
The experts said it’s believed this quick-firing neuron production could contribute to little kids forgetting their earliest memories.
They explained: “By forming new connections with memory circuits, the masses of new neurons may disrupt existing networks of already-formed memories.”
Huh!