Our earliest memories may still exist

For decades, scientists assumed that our inability to recall events from infancy, known as “infantile amnesia”, was due to the brain’s lack of development, particularly the hippocampus, which is critical for memory formation. However, new findings challenge this belief.

Researchers discovered that infants as young as a few months old can encode and recall memories. This breakthrough raises the potential that our earliest experiences might still be stored in the brain, hidden from conscious retrieval.

The study showed that heightened activity in the hippocampus when infants saw an image predicted whether they would later recognize it. This suggests that episodic memories, those tied to specific events, begin forming earlier than previously believed. While these memories fade or become inaccessible over time, the findings open new avenues for exploring how memory develops and why our earliest recollections vanish.

The research not only reshapes scientists’ understanding of infant memory but also opens the possibility that the first moments of life remain embedded in the mind, waiting for the right key to unlock them.

You can read the full story in this article from Sci Tech Daily:
https://scitechdaily.com/your-earliest-memories-might-still-exist-scienc...