Hello again tiktakers! We have a few questions for you: Do you remember the day you were born?
What about your first birthday? Or maybe you remember the day you walked on your own for
the first time? For most of you, surely the answer to those questions will be no,
and this is due to a phenomenon known as childhood amnesia.
Even in the year 2021, we are still not certain about why it is so difficult for
us to remember our first years alive, although it is an area which has seen a lot of study.
In fact, one of the first people who showed interest in researching this phenomenon
was the famous neurologist Sigmund Freud.
The childhood amnesia we are talking about isn't produced due to any sort of trauma – it
is something common in virtually all people. Some do claim to remember key moments of
their first year of life, but most of the time they are actually invented memories.
For example, it could've been that your mother said to you: "Remember the green pants you were
wearing in your first birthday?" Things like that can condition what we think we remember.
Our bodies, as well as our minds, gradually evolve and mature over the years through a
process composed of different stages. Babies do have memory at that initial stage of their lives,
but it isn't completely developed yet. Once we turn one year old, we usually become capable
of remembering concepts, causes, and effects. For instance, we would be able to understand
that if we start crying, our mother or father will check on us to see what is going on. That
is called semantic memory. And at such a young age we also have a bit of episodic memory, which
means that we store events in our minds for a while, although we forget them pretty soon after.
For those events to become long-term memories, a region of the brain called
the hippocampus has to intervene. In that area, new neurons are developed,
and connections are regenerated. And there lies the crux of the issue, tiktakers:
During our first year of life, the hippocampus produces new neurons and connections constantly.
This results in some of the already existing neurons and connections to be discarded,
so that the hippocampus can function orderly and efficiently.
This is known as a synaptic prune – it's kind of like pruning a tree so it can keep growing.
Our brain eliminates information to be able to store more, and over the years,
the activity pace of the connections slows down, allowing us to store more memories in our brains.
Moreover, something that also plays a role is that we mature at different levels, for instance,
when it comes to language. This results in us being able to explain and communicate what is
happening to us, and so it's fundamental. It also helps connect concepts with emotions. Because of
course, when something is affecting us strongly, we'll remember it better. Because of that,
the stage of our lives that we have the most memories about is adolescence. During those
years we are developing our personality, and we have an identity for the first time,
so our memories of that time tend to be much more clear.
As you can see tiktakers, the human brain is still an enigma even for the best experts in the field,
and its intricate workings never stop surprising us.
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