Childhood amnesia: why don’t we remember the first years of life?

Memory works through logic and rules that are difficult to understand.

What is your first memory? The answer to this question will in most cases be a situation or a brief image of some event or sensation we experienced in our early childhood. some event or sensation that we experienced in our early childhood, most of them corresponding to when we wereMostly corresponding to when we were between three and five years old. But at that time we had already been alive for several years. Our brains were already processing information from the environment and we were even able to learn skills, information and ways of acting.

What happened before that first memory, and why can't we remember something before that, such as when we learned to walk or talk? The explanation for this memory gap has a name: it is called infantile amnesia..

What is infantile amnesia?

Infantile amnesia is defined as the inability to remember phenomena and situations that occurred in our early childhood, at an autobiographical level.at an autobiographical level. That is, we retain for example the skills acquired at this stage (e.g. walking or talking), but not how we did it.

This amnesia usually affects the memories that occurred before the memories that occurred before the age of three years.. In fact, when asked about our earliest memories most people usually indicate some kind of item or situation they experienced from that time on. Occasionally it is possible to recall some earlier element, but it is not frequent and would be limited to some very significant phenomenon or a sensation or image.

It has been demonstrated that babies have the capacity to generate memories, but forget them quickly. And even at the autobiographical level: five-year-olds can identify and remember a situation that happened when they were two years old.It is not that children under the age of three have no memory: they are able to remember what happens to them. It is simply that these memories disappear over time. Thus, what would happen would be a real amnesia since it is not that they do not exist but that they fade with time.

There are cases of people who claim to vividly remember previous phenomena. Although in some cases this could be so, for the most part we are not dealing with an authentic recollection but rather an elaboration generated from information we have in the present (for example, from what our parents have told us happened). And in many cases whoever says such a thing is not lying, but has generated a false memory that is lived as true.

When does it appear?

This amnesia of early events has always been observed in adults, but research shows that this amnesia is already visible in childhood. Specifically, experiments and research by Bauer and Larkina in 2013 indicate that usually infantile amnesia appears at about seven years of age..

In addition to this, these investigations have allowed us to observe that younger children are able to have more memories but that these were nevertheless less sharp and detailed, while older children were able to evoke phenomena in a much more extensive, accurate and detailed way despite the fact that they did not remember their early years.

Why don't we remember anything from our early years?

The reason for childhood amnesia is something that has intrigued researchers dedicated to this area and has generated a great deal of research on the subject. Although there is there is not yet a full consensus on the exact causes of our inability to remember why we are not able to remember practically nothing of our first years of life, there are several hypotheses in this regard. Some of the best known are the following.

1. Linguistic hypothesis

Some authors consider that infantile amnesia is due to the lack of inadequate encoding due to the absence or lack of due to the absence or lack of development of language as a structure for organizing information.as a structure that allows the organization of information. Until the development of this ability we would be using an iconic representation in which we would remember through images, but once the memory starts to be codified and organized through language, these first memories would end up weakening and later being lost.

2. Neurological hypothesis

There are also neurological hypotheses. In this regard, some recent research seems to indicate that the absence of memory at this time could be linked to the immaturity of the child. could be linked to the immaturity of our brain and the overpopulation of our and the neuronal overpopulation that we have during the first years of life.

During early childhood our hippocampus is immersed in a process of constant neurogenesis, dramatically increasing the number of neurons we possess (especially in the dentate gyrus). This constant growth and creation of neurons makes it difficult to record information in a persistent and stable manner, thus losing autobiographical information.

The reason for this may lie in the degradation of memories as new neurons replace pre-existing connections. the degradation of memories as the new neurons replace pre-existing connectionsor in the fact that the new ones are more excitable and more activated than those already in the brain.

There may also be a link between this forgetfulness and neural pruning, in which part of the neurons in our brain die in a pre-programmed way to improve the efficiency of our nervous system, leaving only the most powerful and reinforced connections.

3. Hypothesis on the formation of the ego

Another explanation that has been proposed suggests that we are incapable of remembering our first moments because at those ages we still do not have a self-concept or an identity: we are not aware that we are, that we exist, so there is no "I" from which we can elaborate a biography. there is no "I" of which we can elaborate a biography..

4. Other hypotheses

In addition to these, we can find many other hypotheses that have been overcome by the development of Psychology. For example, from the classical psychoanalytic model it was proposed that forgetfulness is due to the repression of our instincts and the Oedipus conflict.

Bibliographical references:

• Bauer, P. J. & Larkina, M. (2013) The onset of childhood amnesia in childhood: A prospective investigation of the course and determinants of forgetting of early-life events. Memory.
• Josselyn, S. & Frankland, P. (n.d). Infantile amnesia: A neurogenic hypothesis. Learning & Memory, 19(9), 423-433.
• Akers, K. G.; Martinez-Canabal, A.; Restivo, L.; Yiu, A. P.; De Cristofaro, A.; Hsiang, H. L. L.; Wheeler, A.L.; Guskjolen, A.; Niibori, Y.; Shoji, H.; Ohira, K.; Richards, B.A.; Miyakawa, T.; Josselyn, S.A. & Frankland, P. W. (2014). Hippocampal Neurogenesis Regulates Forgetting During Adulthood and Infancy. Science, 344 (6184), 598-602.