Why do not we remember our early years? Do children make memories at all? | Science and Technology News

Have you ever been convinced that you remember to be a child? A moment in a bed, or the taste of the first Christmas cake?

There are possibilities, those memories are not real. Research contracts indicate that most people cannot remember personal experiences from the first few years of life.

However, although we cannot remember to be a child, a new study has found new evidence that children are taking in the world around them and may also start creating memories at a greatest time of his appearance before.

How did the study succeed and what did you find?

A study published this month in science by researchers at the University of Yale and Colombia revealed that children who are not more than 12 months old can form memories across the fortress – a part of the brain that stores memories in adults as well.

To monitor this, the researchers used a specially adapted examination for infants during one session. They were allowed to see how children’s brains responded while waking up and look at pictures of faces and things. Parents remained close to their children, which helped them keep them calm and alert them.

In the study, 26 infants between the ages of four to 25 months were displayed on a series of photos. It was found that if the hippocampus for the child was more active the first time they saw a specific image, they will look at the same picture longer when it appeared again after a short time, along with a new image – which indicates that they realized it.

“Our results indicate that the brains of children have the ability to form memories-but to the period that lasts these memories, it is still an open issue,” said Tritistan Yates, a post-PhD research in the Department of Psychology at the University of Colombia and the study author.

This is the first time that scientists have noticed directly how the memory begins to crystallize in the brain of the awakening child. former research Depend on indirect notes, such as monitoring whether children’s reaction to something familiar. This time, however, the researchers noticed brain activity associated with specific memories with its formation in actual time.

Most of the previous brain activity studies were conducted while children were asleep, which is limited to what researchers can identify about building conscious memory.

What does this tell us about early life memories?

The results indicate that the cross memory – the type of memory that helps us to remember specific events and the context in which they occurred – begins to develop before scientists previously believed.

Until recently, it was widely believed that this type of memory did not begin to form until after the birth of the first child, usually about 18 to 24 months. Although the results of the science study were stronger in infants over the age of 12 months, the results were also observed in younger children.

So, at what age we start making memories?

It is now understood that children begin to form limited types of memory when you are young up to two or three months. These include implicit memories (such as motor skills) and statistical learning, which helps infant discover patterns in language, faces and routine.

However, the cross memory, which allows us to remember specific events as well as where and the date of their occurrence, takes longer to develop and require the maturity of the hippocampus.

According to Christina Maria Albertini, a professor of neural science at New York University, the period in childhood when the Husayn develops her ability to form her memories and store “critical”. She added that this window may be important not only for memory, but also “significant effects on mental health, memory or cognitive disorders.”

Memories formed in early childhood do not usually last for a long time, and it is believed that they may explain why we cannot remember them later in life. In a continuous study at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Germany, 20 -month -old children They were able to remember Which was a game in any area for up to six months, while young children kept memory for only one month.

Why do we not remember anything from childhood?

The almost non -commercial people’s inability to call personal experiences by the age of three is a phenomenon known as “childish memory loss”.

For decades, scientists believed that this happens simply because children’s brains were very immature to store accidental memories.

But the study of science showed that children already constitute memories. Mystery Why Those memories become unparalleled with our age.

one clarificationScientists say that the brains of children are subject to rapid nerves-rapid creation of new neurons in the brain. This rapid growth may disrupt or “write” the current memories. In animal studies, when scientists slowed this process in small mice, mice managed to keep memories for a longer period – similar to adult mice.

There is also a hypothesis that the accidental memory requires a language to describe it and “feel itself” to communicate with it. Since these skills do not fully evolve until the age of three or the fourth, the brain may not have the tools needed to regulate and restore memories the way adults do.

Some researchers also believe that forgetfulness may serve a development purpose. By giving up the specified early experiments, the brain may be better able to focus on building general knowledge – to understand how the world works, for example – without distracting their attention with detailed memories that no longer serve a purpose.

Can some people remember the events from childhood?

Some people claim that they can remember being a child, but there is no evidence that what they describe is real cross memories.

According to the study of Yale and Columbia, this belief usually stems from a psychological process called “source misconduct”.

People may remember information, like they cried during their first haircut, but not where this information came from. The memory may be attributed to personal experience without awareness when it already came from a picture, family stories, or the narration of one of the parents. Over time, the line between the “real” and “rebuilding” has been cleansed.

Research shows that early family stories, frequent images or cultural focus on early development can all contribute to this phenomenon.

Yale is currently conducting a new study in which parents photograph their children regularly, either with their phones at an angle from the child’s point of view or using the cameras installed on the head on young children. Later, as children get older, researchers for children will show old videos to see if they get to know experiments, primarily by monitoring brain activity, to know the time when early memories can continue.

Can early memories be called in life?

There is a discussion about whether the memories of early life are completely erasing or simply accessible and can be finally recovered.

Yets said that although the last study does not answer this question, the initial evidence of other research in the Yale Lab shows that the memories of early life in early childhood can be called, but not later in childhood.

She said: “I think the idea that some memories of our early life may exist in some way in our brains as adults are great.”

Adult rodents studies have shown that early memories can be repeated through approaches such as optics – stimulating specific brain cells that are believed to store those memories. This works by identifying the brain cells involved in the formation of a memory, then using light later to reactivate these cells themselves, which leads to the animal calling for memory.

Techniques such as optics can not yet be used in humans, but the study of rodents indicates that the process in which we recover memories is the place where the issue lies, instead of whether memories are at all, according to Paul Frankland, the chief scientist at the sick children’s hospital in Toronto.

“Perhaps there are natural conditions in which early life memories become easier,” he added.

Psychoanalysts such as Sigmund Freud believe that early childhood memories were not lost, but they are deeply buried in the subconscious, and that psychotherapy may help bring them to the surface by changing mental states.

However, Frankland said this is “a controversial field” because it is “difficult to verify the authenticity of the recovered memories.”