Researchers have made a groundbreaking discovery, challenging the long-held assumption that infants cannot form memories. Using fMRI scans, they found that babies as young as 12 months old can encode experiences in their hippocampus, a brain region critical for memory.
The study suggests that infantile amnesia – the inability to remember early childhood – may be due to retrieval failures rather than an inability to form memories. While humans cannot recall events from their first few years of life, evidence shows that early memories may persist but remain inaccessible.
The hippocampus was found to be active during a memory task in infants as young as 12 months, indicating that the brain has the capacity to encode individual experiences during infancy. This finding is significant, as it implies that memories formed during this period may become inaccessible for retrieval over time.
Previous research in rodents has shown that memories created during infancy can persist into adulthood but remain inaccessible without direct stimulation of hippocampal engrams or reminder cues. The human study supports these findings, suggesting that postencoding mechanisms – the processes by which memories from infancy become inaccessible for retrieval – may be responsible for infantile amnesia.
The discovery sheds new light on the development of memory in infants and challenges existing theories about infantile amnesia. As researchers continue to explore the complexities of brain function and memory formation, this study provides a significant breakthrough in understanding human development.
Source: https://neurosciencenews.com/infant-memory-formation-28498