Scientists have long believed that humans cannot remember their early childhood because the part of the brain responsible for doing so is still developing. However, a new study confirms that it is not so and informs that Babies of only 12 months can encode memories.
The findings suggest that Child Amnesia (The inability to remember the first years of life) is probably due to failures in recovering memory rather than the inability to form memories from the beginning.
Behind this research there are scientists from the Yale University, USA. The results are published in the Science magazine.
Although humans learn a lot during the first years of life, as adults they cannot remember specific events of that time. Why this blind spot is still a mystery.
A theory suggests that it occurs because the part of the brain responsible for keeping memories – the hippocampus– Adolescence is still being developed well and simply cannot encode memories in the first years. New research refutes this idea, as already done in studies with rodents.
To do this, the researchers focused on the call memory Episodic, which deals with specific events such as sharing an Indian meal with relatives last night. This memory is different from statistical learning, which consists in extracting patterns from events, such as the aspect of restaurants or typical cadence when sitting and being treated.
Babies are remarkably good statistical apprentices and it is believed that this is important for the development of language and other general knowledge, Nick Turk-Browne, of Yale, explains that he adds that previously it had already been shown that statistical learning relies on the hippocampus, starting from 3-4 months.
On the other hand, according to the current study, the episodic memory relies on the hippocampus – although using different neural pathways – but from approximately 12 months, the scientist adds, who sees understandable, by the needs of the baby, that statistical learning can come into play before the aforementioned memory.
To get to your conclusions, The researchers recruited 26 babies between 4 and 25 months to perform a memory task, and used a functional magnetic resonance image to measure the activity in the hippocampus -This technique uses blood oxygenation as an indicator of cerebral neuronal activity.
Specifically, the team, led by Tristan Yates (now at Columbia University), showed babies the image of a new face, object or scene. Subsequently, after they saw several more images, they were taught a photo previously seen next to a new one.
In this task, If a baby stares at the previous image more than the new one next to her, this can be interpreted as recognized as a family membersummarizes Turk-Browne.
Specifically, the researchers discovered that the greater the activity in the hippocampus when a baby looked at a new image, the longer it watched it when it reappeared later.
And the back of the hippocampus, where the coding activity was more intense, is the same area that is mainly associated with episodic memory in adults.
This was observed throughout the sample of 26 babies, but it was more forceful among those over 12 months (half of the sample), summarizes a Yale statement.
But, What happens then with these children’s memories? Coding is the process by which the hippocampus captures a snapshot of our current sensory experience. This is the first stage in the construction and retention of episodic memory, it details Efe Turk-Browne.
Coded memories must consolidate with the rest of the brain, which happens in later days and weeks during sleep. These can last for years, but they must finally recover to influence what we report and our behavior.
“The study shows that the hippocampus can encode episodic memories, which suggests that the stages of consolidation or recovery could be responsible for child amnesia.”
The findings coincide with recent studies in rodents, which demonstrate that the memories generated during childhood can persist until adulthood, but remain inaccessible for recovery without the direct stimulation of the grease (traces that originate when a new memory is created and every time a situation is remembered) or reminder signs.
“We are working to trace the durability of hippocampal memories throughout childhood and we are even beginning to consider the hypothetical possibility, almost science fiction, which can last in some way until adulthood, despite being inaccessible,” concludes Turk-Browne.