Why don’t people remember their early childhood? The scientists’ answer has radically changed the usual ideas

In a new study using MRI, scientists have shown that the brains of babies under the age of one are capable of encoding memories.

The new study calls into question the conventional wisdom that infants are incapable of forming memories. According to scientists, the inability to recall oneself in early childhood is most likely due to errors in the retrieval of these memories, rather than the fact that they cannot be formed.

Most people usually have little or no memory of themselves in the first three years of life. This phenomenon is called infantile amnesia. According to one assumption, this is due to the fact that the hippocampus in our brain, which is responsible for short-term memory, is not fully developed in early childhood. However, recent rodent studies refute this claim, demonstrating that memory features are formed in the infant hippocampus but become inaccessible later.

Infants in the first years of life demonstrate memory usage through actions such as imitation, recognition of familiar stimuli, and conditioned responses. It remains unclear whether this is dependent on the hippocampus or other parts of the brain.

Scientist Tristan Yates and his colleagues decided to study this question using MRI to scan the brains of infants aged 4 months to two years. The infants were encouraged to perform memory tasks. The tasks were based on the same method that is commonly used in studies involving adults.

The babies were shown images of faces, scenes, and objects, and then tested to see what they could remember based on their gaze. The tests were performed during neuroimaging.

It turned out that at the age of one year, the hippocampus is able to encode individual memories. According to the researchers, the existence of memory encoding mechanisms, despite the temporary nature of these memories, confirms the idea that childhood amnesia is primarily associated with recovery failures rather than an inability to create memories.

These findings are consistent with previous rodent studies suggesting that memories of early life can be retained into adulthood but remain inaccessible without specific cues or direct hippocampal stimulation to the existing connection to those memories.

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The study was published in the journal Science