A groundbreaking new study published in the journal Science has challenged long-held assumptions about infant memory. Researchers discovered that babies as young as 12 months can encode memories, contradicting theories that memory formation is impossible in infancy.
The inability to recall early life experiences, known as infantile amnesia, may stem from retrieval failures rather than an actual loss of memory. This concept is supported by the finding that the hippocampus, a brain region essential for episodic memory, is capable of encoding individual memories in infants. However, these memories tend to be short-lived.
Infants demonstrate memory through behaviors such as imitation, recognition of familiar stimuli, and conditioned responses. Despite this, it has remained unclear whether these abilities depend on the hippocampus or other brain structures.
To investigate this, a team led by Tristan Yates used fMRI to scan the brains of infants aged 4 to 25 months while they completed a memory task. The results showed that the infant hippocampus can encode individual memories by around 12 months.
These findings align with previous rodent studies, which suggest that early-life memories can persist into adulthood but remain inaccessible without specific cues or direct stimulation of hippocampal engrams.
Source: https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-reveal-why-we-cant-remember-our-earliest-years