It is only from this age that the brain is capable of keeping events in memory. Before, your memories are a lure.
When are your first memories come back? From birth, a newborn baby is bombed with information that he will forget in adulthood. This infantile amnesia is due to the immaturity of the brain. The hippocampus, involved in the training and consolidation of memories, develops up to seven years. Earlier, the child first favors his semantic and perceptible memories, fundamental to acquire knowledge and record sensory information.
His brain has not yet reached maturity, the toddler becomes incapable of effectively storing memories of episodic memory. This type of memory allows the conscious recovery of personal events experienced in their context (date, place, emotional state). Overall, information storage is enabled thanks to a set of five interconnected systems involving various neural networks, according to the Brain research foundation (FRC).
The development of our memory capacities has long fascinated neuroscientists. Until recently, researchers thought that young brains were not sufficiently developed to form lasting memories. But Studies carried out in the 1980s have shown that toddlers can store memories from the age of two and remember in detail of events that have occurred several months earlier.
If the evocation of childhood memories varies from person to person, interactions between parents and children stimulate memory and cognitive skills. On the other hand, “before the age of 2 or 3 years, therefore during infantile amnesia, memory is not” mature “enough to create lasting memories, and we observe an accelerated forgetfulness of these first memories”, explains Antoine Bouyeure, doctoral student in neuroscience, to Futura.
In this case, why do some adults say to remember early events? In reality, these memories are misleading. They are indeed what is called the “family novel”: the life of a family is punctuated by unifying events, repeatedly told to the children. It feels like remembering it, but it’s a lure. Our ability to rebuild and appropriate information is influenced by the stories of our elders, reports Science and life.