Infantile amnesia, the phenomenon of young children being unable to recall specific experiences from their early years, has long been a topic of debate among researchers. A new study published in Science challenges this assumption by showing that infants can form memories, but these memories become difficult to retrieve later in life.
According to professor Nick Turk-Browne of Yale University, who led the study, infants around one year old are extraordinary learners, acquiring language, walking, and recognizing objects. However, despite this incredible plasticity, they cannot recall those experiences. This mismatch between learning ability and memory retention is a long-standing puzzle in psychology.
Previous research has suggested that early memories may be repressed, a theory largely dismissed by science. Instead, modern theories focus on the hippocampus, a critical brain region for episodic memory, which is not fully developed in infancy.
Turk-Browne’s team overcame the challenge of studying infants’ brains using innovative methods, including working with families to incorporate pacifiers and blankets, holding babies still with pillows, and using psychedelic background patterns. Despite some blurry images, 26 infants participated in the study, including half under a year old and half over one.
The researchers used fMRI scans to track brain activity during memory tasks adapted from adult studies. They found that the hippocampus is active in memory encoding from a young age, confirming that infants have the capacity to encode episodic memories starting around one year of age.
However, the study raises more questions than answers about what happens to these early memories. Perhaps they are never fully consolidated into long-term storage, or perhaps they persist but become inaccessible. Turk-Browne suspects the latter and is now leading a new study to test whether infants can recognize video clips recorded from their own perspective as younger babies.
The study’s findings have significant implications for our understanding of infant development and memory formation. While more research is needed to fully understand the persistence of early memories, this groundbreaking study provides valuable insights into the complex mechanisms underlying human memory.
Source: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-03-infants-reveals.html