The crucial structure for episodic memory is the hippocampus, that little curved ridge in the middle of the brain. Memories, according to scientists, can form in even very young children. It is not yet clear whether these memories can be retrieved. Perri Klass tries to unlock the secrets of the brain.
Like many other pediatricians, I do not wear a white coat. Many of us believe that babies and small children suffer from a special form of "white coat syndrome," that mix of trepidation and anxiety that some adults experience, in a medical setting. The pediatric version is easy to diagnose: Doctor in white coat walks into room, kid starts to cry.
I worry that a child like this has recalled shots or an unpleasant ear check and has connected that memory to a particular garment, rather than to my face, or my room, or my stethoscope. But how realistic is that? Do babies remember past events? Starting when?
Investigations of memory formation raise fascinating questions about how children store and retrieve experiences and information. In some ways, we tend to exalt the memory-related feats of the infant and the toddler. True, they can learn languages; sorting out words and syntax from the surrounding noise is in many ways a defining human use of memory.
Nora Newcombe, a professor of psychology at Temple University, points out that there may be evolutionary reasons that this kind of memory , semantic memory, is so strong in the early years. Yet, every adult lacks memories from the very early years.
Freud called it "infantile amnesia," "the peculiar amnesia which veils from most people (not from all!) the first years of their childhood." Not surprisingly, he felt we repress those early childhood memories because they contain the beginnings of sexual feeling. That theory has not held sway for many years, and in this era of measurement and MRIs, we have come to a more anatomic understanding of the development of infant memory.
It is part of the larger picture of how different kinds of memory develop while the brain undergoes early growth and interconnection. Decades ago, it was thought that very young infants did not have the capacity for forming memories, said Patricia Bauer, a professor of psychology at Emory University. As techniques have been developed for testing infants and very young children, it has been found that "the neural structures creating those representations in infancy are qualitatively the same as in older children and adults," she said.
The crucial structure for episodic memory, the memory of autobiographical events, is the hippocampus, the little curved ridge in the middle of the brain. Bauer compared memory forming to making gelatin: "The experience is the liquid gelatin; you pour it into a mold. The mold is the hippocampus, and it has to go through a process of refrigeration known as consolidation." Memories can form in even very young children, but it is not clear that they can be retrieved.
"Retrieval forms later," said Charles Nelson, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard and Boston Children's Hospital. "You need an interconnected network of structures to retrieve things from memory."
Recent research suggests that some of those very early memories may actually be held into childhood, but then lost as children grow into adolescence. Research has also shown a strong cultural component to the question of how far back children remember.
As a developmental psychologist, Carole Peterson, professor of psychology at Memorial University of Newfoundland, is interested in the autobiographical stories that young children tell. In 2011, she and her colleagues published a study of children's memories. Children of ages 4 to 13 were asked about their earliest memories, and then those children were asked the same question two years later. The older children were more likely to recall the same memories, but the younger ones often gave completely different answers. When prompted with the memories they recounted at the earlier interview, many could not recall them at all. So three- and four-year-olds do remember events from the very early years.
Development of memories
"They clearly do have the memories, they do have the language skills," Peterson said. "But often, by the time they grow up to be adults, those memories are gone. This age of earliest memory seems to be a moving target."
Peterson said two qualities predicted whether a child was more likely to hold on to a particular memory. If the child mentioned emotion when describing a memory, it was much more likely to stick. And if the memory was described coherently, with sequence and cause understood, it was more likely to have been retained.
Parents who discuss memories with their children and ask who-what-when questions, she said, can help children understand how memories work.
Infants are not only figuring out a new world, but also coming to understand their own independent existence, what one researcher called "me-ness."
And it is an enduring fascination that as adults, we cannot quite see back into the earliest years of that formation, as the neurons branched and the gelatin cooled and we became our early selves.
Like many other pediatricians, I do not wear a white coat. Many of us believe that babies and small children suffer from a special form of "white coat syndrome," that mix of trepidation and anxiety that some adults experience, in a medical setting. The pediatric version is easy to diagnose: Doctor in white coat walks into room, kid starts to cry.
I worry that a child like this has recalled shots or an unpleasant ear check and has connected that memory to a particular garment, rather than to my face, or my room, or my stethoscope. But how realistic is that? Do babies remember past events? Starting when?
Investigations of memory formation raise fascinating questions about how children store and retrieve experiences and information. In some ways, we tend to exalt the memory-related feats of the infant and the toddler. True, they can learn languages; sorting out words and syntax from the surrounding noise is in many ways a defining human use of memory.
Nora Newcombe, a professor of psychology at Temple University, points out that there may be evolutionary reasons that this kind of memory , semantic memory, is so strong in the early years. Yet, every adult lacks memories from the very early years.
Freud called it "infantile amnesia," "the peculiar amnesia which veils from most people (not from all!) the first years of their childhood." Not surprisingly, he felt we repress those early childhood memories because they contain the beginnings of sexual feeling. That theory has not held sway for many years, and in this era of measurement and MRIs, we have come to a more anatomic understanding of the development of infant memory.
It is part of the larger picture of how different kinds of memory develop while the brain undergoes early growth and interconnection. Decades ago, it was thought that very young infants did not have the capacity for forming memories, said Patricia Bauer, a professor of psychology at Emory University. As techniques have been developed for testing infants and very young children, it has been found that "the neural structures creating those representations in infancy are qualitatively the same as in older children and adults," she said.
The crucial structure for episodic memory, the memory of autobiographical events, is the hippocampus, the little curved ridge in the middle of the brain. Bauer compared memory forming to making gelatin: "The experience is the liquid gelatin; you pour it into a mold. The mold is the hippocampus, and it has to go through a process of refrigeration known as consolidation." Memories can form in even very young children, but it is not clear that they can be retrieved.
"Retrieval forms later," said Charles Nelson, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard and Boston Children's Hospital. "You need an interconnected network of structures to retrieve things from memory."
Recent research suggests that some of those very early memories may actually be held into childhood, but then lost as children grow into adolescence. Research has also shown a strong cultural component to the question of how far back children remember.
As a developmental psychologist, Carole Peterson, professor of psychology at Memorial University of Newfoundland, is interested in the autobiographical stories that young children tell. In 2011, she and her colleagues published a study of children's memories. Children of ages 4 to 13 were asked about their earliest memories, and then those children were asked the same question two years later. The older children were more likely to recall the same memories, but the younger ones often gave completely different answers. When prompted with the memories they recounted at the earlier interview, many could not recall them at all. So three- and four-year-olds do remember events from the very early years.
Development of memories
"They clearly do have the memories, they do have the language skills," Peterson said. "But often, by the time they grow up to be adults, those memories are gone. This age of earliest memory seems to be a moving target."
Peterson said two qualities predicted whether a child was more likely to hold on to a particular memory. If the child mentioned emotion when describing a memory, it was much more likely to stick. And if the memory was described coherently, with sequence and cause understood, it was more likely to have been retained.
Parents who discuss memories with their children and ask who-what-when questions, she said, can help children understand how memories work.
Infants are not only figuring out a new world, but also coming to understand their own independent existence, what one researcher called "me-ness."
And it is an enduring fascination that as adults, we cannot quite see back into the earliest years of that formation, as the neurons branched and the gelatin cooled and we became our early selves.