The best part of our life was to live like a tiny, carefree creature, an innocent and adorable baby. But all we have now are plenty of photographic evidence and are elders telling us about our infancy. No matter how sharp our memory is or how hard we try to recall those days but in reality, we can’t even count back to the faintest memory of being a baby.
There have been various reasons proposed so far to explain how you can remember years long memories but not those of being a baby called the Infant Amnesia.
Some previous theory suggest that a baby amnesia is a result of the lack of any language or emotional development in a baby which prevented self-interpretation of those days and so the memories can’t be recollected, others blame the high turnover rate of childhood memories stating that to learn new things and in making new memories old memories are forced wayside.
Experimenting with mice and monkey, they found that even these species forget about their childhood days. Further researches revealed that young mice have slower neurone growth rate and possess better long term memory than adults ones with increased rates who face memory loss. We humans have the same trend of neurone growth and thus forget our infant days.
The hippocampus is a region where brain records autobiographical events. The rapid birth of many neurones known as neurogenesis in a young brain blocks accesses to old memories due to disruptions in brain circuitry that stores old memories. With age, the neurogenesis slows down, and hippocampus achieves a balance of memory formation and retention. This is what makes us remember our later days of life but not the ones of a baby.
Generally the children can recall a significant part of their past years up to the age of 3, they can remember the events even in later years like till the age of about 7 but the recall rate continues to decline with passing years and at the age of 7 its not as vivid as at the age of 3. In later years the recall rates fall drastically and slowly the childhood memory fades away.
So if you cannot recollect the memories of being born or as that of a baby it does not mean they are black out periods of your life rather a beautiful memory which is meant to be heard by our parents and elders with whom we enjoyed those days.
Last Updated on by Laveleena Sharma
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