Why don’t we remember being a baby? New research provides clues

We learn a lot during the first year of life, but we cannot remember the specific events at that time as an adult. The researchers believed that some of the brains that store memories still develop well in adolescence, and they have not been coded in the early days because they cannot encode memories in the early days. But New Yale Research found evidence that is not.

In one study, Yale researchers showed new images to infants and tested them later. When the hippocampus of infants was more active when I first saw the image, it was more likely to recognize the image later.

result, Post ~ science, Memory indicates that in our first year, our brain can actually be encoded. And researchers are now investigating what happens to the memory over time.

In the first few years, our incompetent thing we can’t remember is called “infant memory loss.” But studying this phenomenon is difficult.

Nick Turk-Browne, an arts and psychological professor of the Department of Science, Yale, said, “The feature of this memories that we call the memory of the episode can be explained to others, but Yale’s Wu Tsai Institute’s arts and psychological professors of the Department of Science are Nick. Turk-Browne said.

For this study, the researchers wanted to identify the powerful way of testing the children’s episodes. The team, led by Tristan Yates, a graduate student and a doctoral researcher at Columbia University, showed an image of new faces, things or scenes for four to two years old infants. Later, after seeing some different images of infants, the researchers showed the previous image next to the new image.

Turk-Browne said, “When a baby sees something before, we expect to see more when we see it again.” In this task, if an infant stares at more new images next to before, it can be interpreted as recognizing it as a familiar baby.

In a new study, in the past 10 years, it was historically difficult because it was historically difficult because it was difficult to maintain the short interest and instructions of infants in the past decade.

Specifically, the researchers evaluated whether the hippocampus was associated with the intensity of the child’s memory. They knew that when the infant was looking at the new image, the greater the activity of the hippocampus, the longer the infant saw it longer when it reappeared later. The rear of the hippocampus with the strongest encoding activities (closer to the back of the head) is the same as the area that is most related to the episode of the adult episode.

These results were true in the entire sample of 26 infants, but the strongest in more than 12 months (half of the sample group). This age effect leads to a more complete theory of how the hippocampus develops to support learning and memory, Turk-browne said.

Previously, the team found the hippocampus. The three -month -old infant showed different types of memories. It is called “statistical learning.” The episode covers a specific event, such as sharing a Thai meal with visitors outside the last night, but statistical learning is to extract patterns from events such as areas where certain dishes are found, or typical Kaduns to serve.

These two types of memories use different neuron paths in the hippocampus. And in the past animal studies, the researchers showed that the statistical learning path found in the front part of the hippocampus (closer to the front of the head) occurs earlier than the episode memory.

Turk-Brown thus suspected that episode memory could appear in infancy for more than a year. He argues that this developmental progress is meaningful when thinking about the needs of infants.

“Statistical learning is to extract a structure in the world around us,” he said. “This is important for the development of language, vision, and concept. So you can understand why statistical learning works earlier than episode memories.”

Nevertheless, according to the latest research from the research team, it shows that long before the earlyest memories we can report as adults, we can encode temporary memories earlier than previously thought before. What is this memory?

Turk-Browne says there are some possibilities. One is that memories do not last long because they are not converted to long -term repository. The other is that memories last longer after encoding and we cannot access them. And Turk-Brown doubts that it may be the latter.

In the ongoing work, the team of Turk-Browne is testing whether infants, infants and children can remember home videos from the perspective as a young baby, and show that temporary pilot results can last until the kindergarten era before this memory is fed.

The new results led by Yates provide an important connection.

Turk-Browne said, “Tristan’s human work is very compatible with the evidence of recent animals that infant memory loss is a search issue.” We are trying to track the durability of the hippocampus memories in childhood, and despite the inability to access it, we have begun to enjoy the radical and almost science fantasy potential that can withstand adults in some forms.