Topic for Apr 4(Fri)

[Kristin55]

Why We Can't Remember Being Babies

What's your earliest memory? Maybe it's your first day of school, a birthday party, or a favorite toy.

Most people can't remember anything from before they were 3 or 4 years old. This phenomenon is called "infantile amnesia."

For a long time, scientists thought this happened because babies' brains weren't ready to make memories. They believed the hippocampus — the part of the brain that helps store memories — wasn't yet developed enough.

But a new study from Yale University has found something that challenges this idea.

In the study, researchers showed babies pictures of faces, objects and scenes. Later, they showed a picture the baby had seen before next to a new one. If the baby looked longer at the familiar image, the researchers said it meant they remembered it.

The researchers found that the more active the hippocampus was when the baby first saw an image, the more likely the baby was to remember it later. This hippocampus activity was stronger in babies over 1 year old, but it was present in all of them.

This means the ability to create memories may start much earlier than we used to think.

So if our brain is capable of making memories from a young age, why don't we remember being babies?

Well, scientists still aren't sure.

One idea is that the memories babies make are only short-term, which is why we can't remember them as adults.

Another theory suggests the memories are still in our brains — we just lose the ability to access them. Nick Turk-Browne, who led the study, says infantile amnesia may not be about being unable to make memories, but about being unable to retrieve them later.

So, memories of your first words or first steps might still be locked away in your brain somewhere — you just can't find the key!