Have you ever wondered why you cannot remember childhood memories? Scientists have put this down to childhood amnesia.
There are many theories. Childhood amnesia is one of them.
In the 1900’s Freud coined the phrase “childhood amnesia” to describe the strange phenomenon of losing childhood memories as adults. His theories are we repress our earliest childhood memories because of their disturbing sexual context.
Breaking research in 2005 led by Patricia J Bauer, an Emory University psychology professor and expert in the field of children’s cognitive development. The conclusion of the studies was that children under the age of 3 simply lack the complex neural architecture to retain memories, which became known as the “pasta theory” of memory.
“I compare memory to a colander,” Bauer said. “If you’re cooking fettucine, the pasta stays in. But if you’re cooking orzo, it goes right through the holes. The immature brain is a lot like a colander with big holes, and the little memories are like the orzo. As you get older, you’re either getting bigger pasta or a net with smaller holes.”
Another part of the problem is that early childhood memories are often unreliable. In 1991, Elizabeth Loftus, a cognitive psychologist and expert on human memory, found that many of our early memories are false.
Other research has shown that the stories that are told to us can manifest themselves as fake memories, dreams and fantasies. Do we lose many memories at 7 so we can let go of our childhood?
May 2014
We have struggled to remember our childhood memories especially before the age three. Now researchers believe they know why. The claim is that as we become older; the growth of new brain cells overwrites existing cells, erasing our early memories.
'Infantile amnesia refers to the absence of memories for events that occurred in our earliest years—most people typically don’t remember much of what happened when they were only 2 or 3 years-old,' said Katherine Akers, who led the study at the Neurobiology Laboratory at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
'But this doesn’t seem to be because children at this stage can’t make memories—when our daughter, for instance, was 3 years old she would enthusiastically recount in details trips to the zoo to see grandparents and so on.
'But she is now 5 and has no recollection of these events - these memories are rapidly forgotten.'
Since the hippocampus is important for memory, there have been several studies examining how new neurons might contribute to forming new memories.
The typical result is that reducing levels of neurogenesis impairs the formation of new memories.
But as new neurons integrate into the hippocampus, they may also impact existing memories, the researchers believed.
In particular, as new neurons integrate they necessarily remodel hippocampal circuits, and this remodelling may lead to degradation of information (memories) stored in those circuits.
'We speculated that these high levels of hippocampal neurogenesis are essentially incompatible with stable memory storage—while infants are able to make memories, high levels of neurogenesis lead to the ‘overwriting’ of this information and forgetting.
Another approach, the brain is not just an organ but treated as a muscle. The brain can be trained to improve different cognitive functions like working memory or math skills. There is new evidence that shows that the brain can be developed and function like a muscle. The more you use it the stronger it will get.
Thus, the conclusion is that, as in physical exercise the more you challenge your brain the more you increase your neurons connections resulting in a "smarter brain" (Farrington, C. A. (2013).
Something else to ponder on and why is this, when a child cannot remember childhood memories yet a child learns more before they turn 6 years of age.
Are memories not factual but emotional feelings that tie events together? That maturity plays a big part in this. When we become older we retain memories as we can deal with the emotion aspects of those memories.
I know that depression plays a big part in how we can remember things. Depression tends to make us forgetful.
No comments:
Post a Comment