Family gatherings often lead to playful discussions about childhood antics—stories about how mischievous you were as a toddler, stories that everyone remembers except you. Ever wonder why your family seems to have vivid recollections while you have no recollection at all? Recent research may offer an answer: it’s not that the memories are gone, but rather that retrieving them is far more difficult than we realize.
For decades, scientists believed that infants couldn’t form lasting memories because the brain structures required for memory formation, such as the hippocampus, were underdeveloped. However, a groundbreaking study led by Tristan Yates and his team challenges this long-standing assumption.
In their research, the team used functional MRI (fMRI) scans to examine the brains of infants aged 4 to 25 months. During the study, the babies were shown a variety of images, including faces, objects, and scenes. Afterward, researchers monitored the infants’ brains for signs of recognition, looking for specific neurological responses.
The results were eye-opening: by the time babies reach 12 months, their brains are capable of encoding specific memories. This suggests that, despite not being able to recall events from early childhood, our brains were storing information all along. The phenomenon of not remembering anything from those formative years is known as “infantile amnesia.”
Traditionally, scientists believed that the hippocampus, a region of the brain crucial for forming episodic memories, wasn’t fully developed in infants. This underdevelopment was thought to explain why early memories couldn’t be formed or recalled. But what if those memories aren’t lost, just locked away?
Recent studies in animals, particularly rodents, have hinted at the possibility that memories formed in early life remain stored in the brain’s structure but become inaccessible over time without specific cues or external triggers. In other words, memories might be embedded deep in the brain, just buried—rather than erased. The new study on infant memory backs up this idea, suggesting that babies do form memory traces, but these early memories become increasingly difficult to retrieve as they grow older.
Interestingly, infants do display memory in ways that go beyond simple reflexes. Babies can imitate actions they’ve observed, recognize familiar faces, and respond to repeated stimuli—clear signs of memory at work. However, scientists couldn’t determine whether these behaviors were tied to the hippocampus or to other parts of the brain until now.
The recent study confirms that the hippocampus is indeed active during memory tasks in infants. This shows that the behaviors infants exhibit are not just reflexes or learned responses, but rather actual memory-based reactions. These findings give us a deeper understanding of how early memories are stored and why we may lose conscious access to them as we grow older.
It’s not that our brains forget those first smiles, first steps, or babbling moments; rather, those memories are likely hidden, perhaps waiting for the right “key” to unlock them.
This research also opens the door to understanding memory loss in adults. If early memories are simply inaccessible rather than erased, could other so-called “lost” memories in adults be similarly buried? Could certain triggers or therapies help retrieve these memories?
The findings may hold important implications for conditions such as amnesia and Alzheimer’s disease. If we can better understand how early memories are stored—and why they sometimes become hidden—we might develop new methods for recovering memories or even preventing cognitive decline in adults.
As this research continues to unfold, we may come to realize that memory is far more complex than we ever thought, with many of our forgotten experiences still lurking in the recesses of our brains, waiting for the right moment to be uncovered.
By Impact Lab
