The corpus callosum, a nerve bundle that connects the two sides of the brain, becomes functional at age 4 or 5. The suspected reason? Mixed-handers may have more communication between the brain's hemispheres. In addition, mixed-handers could retell memories retold to them from an earlier age, too. The exercise, designed to measure semantic and episodic memories, revealed the mix-handers' personally remembered (episodic) memories were recalled from an earlier age than the right-handers memories. They were instructed that one memory should be an event they personally remembered, while the other should be an event retold to them by their parents or another witness, which would later be verified as true. ![]() In the study, about 100 collegiate participants who were mix-handed ( ambidextrous) or right-handed were asked to write down two memories from early childhood. Increasing the number of neurons had the opposite effect. ![]() In fact, when the researchers used drugs to decrease the number of new neurons formed by the rodents, the rodents were able to remember better. ![]() Using rodents as test subjects, researchers surmised all these new neurons cropping up in the hippocampus disrupt its formation and access of memories. And where does all of this production take place? The hippocampus, which is what we rely on to access all the memories we're storing. However, babies produce new neurons at an accelerated rate. The process of growing new neurons, known as neurogenesis, occurs throughout a mammal's life. The study centered on the constant formation of new cells in infant brains. Results published in the journal Science shed new light on the amnesia older children and adults have about their baby years. ĭoes this window into early childhood memories really explain why we can't remember being babies? One 2014 study blames the circuits in our brains for betraying our ability to remember babyhood. These connections allow children - and adults - to recall memories for the long term. While both semantic and episodic memories are stored in various regions of the brain's surface, known as the cortex, it isn't until ages 2 to 4 that the brain's hippocampus networks all these disparate regions into one centralized source of information. Scientists think the reason we can't recall events from babyhood may be because of the way memories are stored and accessed. The very act of remembering events and categorizing them within this personal timeline may cause retrieval induced forgetting, a process that causes older children and adults to prune life's earliest memories as they recall specific details about other events. Beginning at 7, children store increasingly linear memories that fit succinctly into a sense of time and space. The change, concluded researchers, comes from the way memories are formed as children age. By age 8 or 9, however, most could recollect only 35 percent of the life experiences they'd so vividly described at 3. The high rate of recall continued until age 7, with the study's participants remembering up to 72 percent of the same events they'd recalled as 3-year-olds. Up until age 3, children in one study could recall significant events that happened to them within the last year. Researchers point to a high turnover rate of childhood memories as one possible culprit, believing that a raft of new experiences simply means some early memories are forced to fall by the wayside. While you may have been able to recall and describe your second birthday party in great detail for months after it happened, a year later those memories may have faded and, eventually, are lost altogether. It's a phenomenon scientists call childhood amnesia. Most adults can't recall life's earliest moments unless the events are reinforced by others who often retell them, or the memories are triggered by photographs or other cues. It's normal to forget your earliest life experiences, despite their crucial and influential nature. ![]() Chances are you don't remember your first or second birthday party - or a host of other events that occurred in early childhood - and you're not alone.
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