Scientists agree that almost no one remembers the first months of their life. There is even a term to describe this phenomenon: child amnesia. As for its causes, there has been a constant debate to define them. In an internet search, you will find explanations such as the lack of language that builds a symbolic reality, the limited ability to associate figures with emotions and the fact that the brain is not yet fully developed to store memories.
As more studies on the brain of newborns are carried out, the enigma of child amnesia seems to clarify. Although it is very likely that you do not remember anything about your first two years of life, that does not mean that you have not formed memories. Experts claim that babies do have the ability to form memories and remember them, although not in the same way as adults.
In the repertoire of adult memories, autobiographical stories predominate, in which we are the protagonists of significant events. A newborn, on the other hand, can remember his mother’s face or learn to move the body to achieve a specific effect, but without himself integrating as the protagonist of the narrative. In fact, experiments have inferred that the perception of the ‘I’ begins to develop around 18 months of age, which reinforces the idea that a notion of identity is necessary to recover an autobiographical memory.
What the hippocampo reveals about the memory of a baby
Although babies cannot express if they remember something, their brains do. Neurologists know that the hippocampus is the brain region that is activated both when a memory is formed and when evoking it. The challenge of the study is that it is extremely difficult to monitor awake newborns and still still sufficiently to get magnetic resonance images.
A recent study by Psychologists from Yale University in the United States has contributed new evidence about the ability of neonates to generate memories. In this experiment published in Sciencewhich included 26 babies between 4 and 25 months of age, the activity of the hippocampus was monitored while adapted memory tests of those used with adults were performed. The results clearly showed that babies can generate episodic memories.
“The findings show that the children article Posted by the American Association for the Advance of Science.
While the results still do not explain at all why we cannot remember our stage as newborns, they offer valuable clues. The 26 babies were able to generate memories and their hippocampus registered them. It is even quite likely to become long -term memories. The enigma of child amnesia, therefore, lies in the mechanism that prevents us from recovering them, experts agree.
In the field of neuroscience, a memory is represented through an engram: a footprint or neuronal connection that is formed when an event is recorded in memory, usually near the hippocampus. Although scientists cannot “see” memories directly, they are capable of mapping grease and tracking the neuronal routes that lead to them.
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