Babies Remember More Than You Think, Study Suggests
Our earliest years are a time of rapid learning, yet we typically cannot recall specific experiences from that period – a phenomenon known as infantile amnesia.
A New Study Challenges Assumptions about Infant Memory
A new study published recently in Science challenges assumptions about infant memory, showing that young minds do indeed form memories. The question remains, however, why these memories become difficult to retrieve later in life.
Why Do Babies Not Remember Milestones?
Around the age of one, children become extraordinary learners – acquiring language, walking, recognising objects, understanding social bonds, and more.
“Yet we remember none of those experiences – so there’s a sort of mismatch between this incredible plasticity and learning ability that we have,” said Nick Turk-Browne, professor of psychology at Yale and the study’s senior author.
The Hippocampus and Memory
Instead of focusing on the hippocampus, a part of the brain critical for episodic memory, which is not fully developed in infancy, Turk-Browne was intrigued by clues from previous behavioral research.
Recent rodent studies monitoring brain activity have also shown that engrams – patterns of cells that store memories – form in the infant hippocampus but become inaccessible over time, although they can be artificially reawakened through a technique that uses light to stimulate neurons.
Overcoming the Challenge of Studying Infant Memory
To overcome the challenge of studying infant memory, Turk-Browne’s team used methods his lab has refined over the years – working with families to incorporate pacifiers, blankets, and stuffed animals; holding babies still with pillows; and using psychedelic background patterns to keep them engaged.
Infants’ Ability to Encode Episodic Memories
Still, inevitable wiggling led to blurry images that had to be discarded, but the team accounted for this by running hundreds of sessions.
In total, 26 infants participated – half under a year old, half over – while their brains were scanned during a memory task adapted from adult studies.
“We quantify how much time they spend looking at the old thing they’ve seen before, and that’s a measure of their memory for that image,” said Turk-Browne.
Conclusion
By comparing brain activity during successful memory formation versus forgotten images, the researchers confirmed that the hippocampus is active in memory encoding from a young age.
This was true for 11 of 13 infants over a year old but not for those under one. They also found that babies who performed best on memory tasks showed greater hippocampal activity.
FAQs
Q: What is infantile amnesia?
A: Infantile amnesia is a phenomenon where we typically cannot recall specific experiences from our earliest years.
Q: What is the purpose of the study?
A: The study aims to challenge assumptions about infant memory, showing that young minds do indeed form memories, and to understand why these memories become difficult to retrieve later in life.
Q: What are the limitations of the study?
A: The study is limited by the difficulty of studying infant memory, as babies are notoriously uncooperative when it comes to sitting still inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine – the device that tracks blood flow to “see” brain activity.