In other words, our brain needs us to be able to give you the best research terms so you can access our older memories
Have you ever wondered what it was like to be a baby? But, no matter how much, can you not remember any detail?
It’s not that you don’t have childhood memories – it’s just not to access them later in life, according to a new investigation.
The study, recently published in Science magazine, examined 26 babies aged between 4.2 and 24.9 months, divided into two age groups: those who had less than 12 months and those between 12 and 24 months.
During the experience, the babies were placed on a functional magnetic resonance machine (FMRI in the acronym in English) and were shown a series of unique images for two seconds each. The researchers intended to record the activity in the hippocampus – the part of the brain associated with emotions, memory and autonomous nervous system.
“Hippocampus is a deep brain structure that is not visible through usual methods, so we have had to develop a new approach to memory experiments with a magnetic resonance imaging machine,” explains Nick Turk-Bowne, the main author of the Yale University Psychology Department, by e-mail. “This type of investigation has been done mainly while babies are sleeping because they move a lot, they can’t follow instructions and have short attention periods.”
Simona Ghetti, professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of California, whose research focuses on childhood memory development, acknowledged that, although many studies have already shown the ability of babies to encode memories, this last investigation is unique as it associates memory coding with hippocampus activation. Ghetti did not participate in the study.
After a brief delay, two images side by side were shown to babies: one of family images they had already seen before and a new one. The researchers followed the eye movements of the babies, noting what image were more time.
If a baby spent more time looking at the family image, it indicated that it recognized it, which indicated a memory. If they did not show any preference, it meant that their memory was less developed, according to the study.
“Eye movements have been used in hundreds of memory studies and babies categorization,” says Ghetti by e -mail. “Babies look at what they think is interesting and researchers have long taken on this spontaneous behavior to get information about memory operation.”
Analyze the activation of the hippocampus
Nick Turk-Browne (left) prepares a child and parents for a study of children’s magnetic resonance imaging at Yale University’s Brain Imaging Center (now brainworks) in 2021
After collecting the initial data, the team analyzed the FMRI tests of the babies who looked at the family image for longer, comparing them with those who had no preference. The tests were excluded if the baby was not concentrated on the screen and stirred or blinked excessively.
The results revealed that the hippocampus was more active in older babies when coding memories. In addition, only older babies had activity in the orbreal cortex, which plays a key role in decision making and memory -related recognition.
“One thing we have learned about memory in adults is that the information we tend to capture and codify in memory are things that are highly relevant to our experience,” says Lila Davachi, professor at Columbia University Department of Psychology, who was not involved in the study. “What is astonishing in this study is convincingly showing the hippocampal coding processes in stimuli that are not important to them.”
Although it is not known yet because the coding of memory seems to be stronger in babies over 12 months, it is likely to be the result of major changes that occur in the body.
“The baby’s brain undergoes many permanent, linguistic, motor, biological and others at this time, including rapid anatomical hippocampus growth,” says Turk-Bowne.
Turk-browne and their team are actively working to test the reason why the brain is unable to recover these early memories throughout life, but speculates that brain processing in babies may suggest that hippocampus is not receiving accurate “research terms” as stored, based on the experiences that the baby was having at the time.
What does this phase mean to parents?
Ghetti encourages parents to reflect on the impact that childhood has on their children, even if they cannot recover the memories experienced at such an early age.
Babies are learning immense at this age, which is the way they begin to assimilate an entire language, associating sounds to meanings, says Ghetti. He also adds that babies are also forming expectations for family members and studying the properties of the objects and the world around them.
Parents often observe this behavior when they sing the same song or read the same book, which, according to Davachi, produces a family response in older children.
“The use of repetition with babies allows a greater connection between parents and baby,” says Ghetti by e -mail.
Even if we do not remember these older memories when we become adults, it is fair to say that one is learning from these experiences, which can be true for both neutral and emotional information, says Ghetti.
“This can remember parents that childhood is not an idle time and that babies are learning a lot,” says Ghetti. “Offering opportunities for visual exploration can be important to cultivate learning skills.”
