Why don't we remember the moment of our birth? Why we don’t remember ourselves in infancy

Our childhood. Looking at the kids from neighboring yard, you understand that this is the most carefree time in the life of every person. However, memories of our childhood or birth are not available to us. What is this secret connected with? Why we shouldn't remember ourselves in childhood. What is hidden behind this gap in our memory. And at some point, a thought suddenly flashed through why do we not remember ourselves from birth, makes us delve into the mysteries of the unknown.

Why We Don't Remember Our Birth

It would seem like this important point like birth was to be imprinted on our brains forever. But no, some bright events from past life sometimes pop up in the subconscious, and most importantly, it is forever erased from memory. It is not surprising that the best minds in psychology, physiology and the religious sphere are trying to figure out such an interesting fact.

Erasing memory from the point of view of mysticism

Researchers studying the unexplored mystical side of the existence of our universe and Higher intelligence, give their answers to the questions of why areas of a person's memory erase the ability to reproduce the process of birth.

The main emphasis is on the Soul. It contains information about:

• lived periods of life,
• emotional experiences,
• achievements and failures.

Why we don't remember how we were born

From a physical point of view, a person is not given to understand the soul and decipher the facts stored in it.

It is assumed that this substance visits the formed embryo on the tenth day of its existence. But she does not settle there forever, but leaves it for a while to return a month and a half before birth.

Scientific evidence

But we do not have the opportunity to remember a very important moment in our life. This is due to the fact that the soul does not want to "share" with the body the information that it itself possesses. A bundle of energy saves our brain from unnecessary data. Most likely, the process of creating a human embryo is too mysterious and cannot be solved. The outer universe uses the body only as an outer shell, while the soul is immortal.

Man is born in pain

Why do we not remember how they were born. There is no clear evidence for this phenomenon. There are only suggestions that the strongest stress experienced at birth is to blame. A child from a warm mother's womb is chosen through the birth canal into a world unknown to him. In the process, he experiences pain due to the changing structure of his body parts.

Height human body is directly related to the formation of memory. An adult remembers the most outstanding moments in his life and places them in a "storage" compartment of his brain.

For children, everything happens a little differently.

• Positive and negative moments and events are deposited in the "subcortex" of their consciousness, but, at the same time, they destroy the memories there.
• The child's brain is not yet sufficiently developed to store abundant amounts of information.
• That is why we do not remember ourselves from birth and do not keep childhood memorable impressions.

What do we remember from childhood

Children's memory develops in the period from 6 months to 1.5 years. But it is already then subdivided into long-term and short-term. The child recognizes the people around him, can switch to one or another subject, knows how to navigate in the apartment.

Another scientific assumption about why we completely forgot the process of appearance in this world is associated with ignorance of words.

The baby does not speak, cannot compare the events and facts, correctly describe what he saw. Infantile amnesia is the name given to psychologists' lack of childhood memories.

Scientists offer their guesses about this problem. They believe that children choose short-term memory as a niche for storing important experiences. And this has nothing to do with a lack of ability to create memories. Any person not only cannot tell how his birth took place, but the passage of time makes him forget other bright moments of life that are important in a certain period.

There are two main scientific theories who are trying to understand this difficult issue.

Why do some people remember themselves as children?

At what age do we begin to remember the events that happen to us? Among your acquaintances, most likely there are people who claim that they remember their infancy... If you are one of them, then stop deceiving yourself. And don't trust others who prove it to be so.

The brain erases events from childhood

An adult can remember the moments that happened to him after five years, but not earlier.

What scientists have proven:

• Infantile amnesia completely erases the first years of life from memories.
• New brain cells, when formed, destroy all early memorable events.
• This action in science is called neurogenesis. It is constant at any age, but is especially stormy in infancy.
• The existing "cells" that store certain information are overwritten by new neurons.
• As a result, new events completely erase old ones.

Amazing facts of human consciousness

Our memory is diverse and has not yet been fully studied. Many scientists have tried to get to the bottom of the truth and determine how to influence it, forcing them to create the "storage rooms" we need. But, even the rapid development of information progress does not make it possible to make such a castling.

However, some points have already been proven and may surprise you. Check out some of them.

What can you remember from childhood

What are your brightest childhood memories? The child's brain is designed in such a way that it is not receptive to sound associations. Most often, he is able to remember the events he saw or those that the children tried to touch.

Fear and pain experienced in infancy are pushed out of the “lockers” and replaced by positive and good impressions... But some people are able to remember only negative moments from life, and they completely erase happy and joyful ones from memory.

Why do our hands remember more than our brains?

A person is able to reproduce bodily sensations in more detail than conscious ones. An experiment carried out with ten-year-old children proved this fact. They were shown photos of their friends from nursery group... Consciousness did not recognize what they saw, only the galvanic skin reaction showed that the children still remembered their grown-up comrades. It is possible to determine this by electrical resistance tested by the skin. It changes with arousal.

Why does memory remember experiences

Emotional memories are scarred by our most negative experiences. Thus, consciousness warns us for the future.

But sometimes the psyche simply does not have the ability to cope with the postponed mental trauma.

• Terrible moments just do not want to fit into a puzzle, but appear in our imaginations in the form of scattered fragments.
• Such a sad experience is stored in torn pieces in the implicit memory. A small detail - a sound, a look, a word, the date of an event - can resurrect the past, which we are trying to erase from the depths of our brain.
• To obsessive terrible facts were not resurrected, each victim uses the principle of the so-called dissociation.
• The experiences after the trauma are split into separate, incoherent fragments. Then they are not so associated with real nightmares from life.

If you are offended:

Are there really options for answering the question why we do not remember ourselves from birth? Maybe this information can still be pulled from the depths of our capacious storage?

When certain problems arise, we most often turn to psychologists. To help cope with its solution, specialists in some cases resort to hypnosis sessions.

It is often believed that all our painful real experiences come from deep childhood.

In the moment of trance, the patient can list all his hidden memories, without even knowing about it.
Sometimes, individual non-susceptibility to hypnosis makes it impossible to immerse in early periods life path.

Some people subconsciously put up a blank wall and protect their emotional experiences from strangers. And this method has not received scientific confirmation. Therefore, if some will tell you that they perfectly remember the moment of their birth, do not take this information seriously. Most often these are simple inventions or a clever professional publicity stunt.

Why do we remember the moments that happen to us after reaching 5 years

Can you give an answer:

• What do you remember from your childhood?
• What were your first impressions of your visit to the nursery?

More often than not, people cannot give at least any answer to these questions. But, nevertheless, at least seven explanations for this phenomenon still exist.

Do we remember it or not

It cannot be assumed that all of the above hypotheses are one hundred percent correct. Since the moment of memorization is a very serious and not fully understood process, it is hard to believe that only one of the listed facts would influence it. Of course, it’s curious that we keep a lot of different things, but we don’t imagine our birth. This is the most greatest secret that humanity cannot figure out. And, most likely, the question of why we do not remember ourselves from birth will excite great minds for more than a dozen years.

Your comments are very interesting - do you remember yourself as a child.

It will be interesting to know.

We are sure that you have thought about this more than once. We remember our childhood and youth, but we are not able to remember the moment when we came into the world - our birth. Why? We will explain in our article.

1. Neurogenesis in the first years of life

With the development of civilization and health care moment of our birth ceased to be dangerous. We come into this world with the help of strangers' hands, which pull us out of the mother's womb - so comfortable, calm and safe. We will never again be able to find places where we would be as desirable and as confident in our safety.

But we are forced to go outside - into a world filled with light, shadows and sounds, not knowing exactly why we are doing this. Most likely we are experiencing.

This is the first time we burst into the world in tears with our first cry (after that there will be many more such times that we cannot forget).

But what other than pain do we experience? Fear, joy, curiosity? We do not know this, no one can answer these questions, because no one, or almost no one, can remember this moment.

This is exactly what happens through a process called neuronal neurogenesis. It sounds confusing, but it's actually a fascinating process of forming new nerve cells.

Until the moment of birth, our brain continues to grow neurons. Some of them overlap. You may ask - why then we do not remember anything? Aren't memory and cognitive abilities linked to neurons? Is it large quantity Neurons Doesn't Improve Our Memory?

For babies who have just ended up in the world, things don't work out that way. At least not in the first months of their lives. Memories are not stored because the neurogenesis of neutrons becomes too intense, structures overlap and memories do not last too long, because new neurons are constantly emerging.

The memory is unstable during this time due to their continued growth. It takes at least five or six months for the process to stabilize. After that, new neurons continue to appear, but this process is not so intense.

But it can already stabilize and the memories can persist for some time. After a child is six or seven years old, the process changes and some of the neurons begin to disappear.

Consequently, the most intense evolutionary period for a child lasts between the age of one and five years. At this time, the child absorbs everything like a sponge and strives for knowledge, so it is very easy for him to learn several languages ​​at once. However, almost all children will not be able to remember the first days of their lives.

2. The meaning of speech and memory

According to doctors and psychologists, we can only remember what we can explain in words. To check if this is so, try thinking about your first memory. Perhaps this is some kind of sensation, or a picture from the past: you are in your mother's arms, you are walking in the park.

It was exactly at this time that you already began to speak. There are many experiments that have proven that it is much easier for us to remember what we can express in words. The brain structures better and stores in the hippocampus what it can associate with words. It is important to remember that language and the ability to speak are closely related to memory.

It is very difficult to remember the moments before and after our birth, when we still do not know how to speak. Nevertheless, there are cases when people could retain small memories of their birth, some sensations. Do you consider yourself to be such people? Tell us about your experience.

The first three to four years of life. Plus, we generally remember pretty little about ourselves until the age of seven. “No, well, I still remember something,” you say, and you will be absolutely right. Another thing is that, upon reflection, it can be difficult to understand in question real memories or second-order memories based on photos and stories from parents.

The phenomenon known as "childhood amnesia" has been a mystery for psychologists for over a century without a clue. In spite of great amount information that can be used and technological advances, scientists still cannot say for sure why this is happening. Although there are a number of popular theories that seem to them the most plausible.

The first reason is the development of the hippocampus

It might seem that the reason we don't remember ourselves in infancy is because babies and toddlers do not fully have. But in fact, The Conversation adds, children as young as 6 months old can form both short-term memories that last for a few minutes, and long-term memories associated with events. last weeks and even months.

In one study on the topic, 6-month-old toddlers who learned how to pull a lever to operate a toy train remembered how to perform this action for 2-3 weeks after they were in last time saw the toy. And preschoolers, according to another study, are able to remember what happened several years ago. But here, experts explain, the question remains open again: these are autobiographical memories or memories obtained with the help of someone or something.

The truth is that the possibilities of memory in childhood are really not the same as in adulthood (moreover, memory continues to develop in adolescence). And this is one of the most popular explanations for "childhood amnesia." It is important to understand that memory is not only about the formation, but also the maintenance and subsequent retrieval of memories. At the same time, the hippocampus - the region of the brain responsible for all of this - continues to develop until at least seven years of age.

It is also interesting that the typical border of "childhood amnesia" at 3-4 years, apparently, shifts with age. There is evidence that children and adolescents generally have earlier memories than adults. And this, in turn, suggests that the question may be less connected with the formation of memories, but more with their preservation.

The second reason is language proficiency

The second important factor that plays a role in childhood memories is language. Between the ages of one and six years, children mostly go through the difficult process of forming speech to become fluent (or even languages, if we are talking about bilinguals). Scientists believe that the assumption that the ability to speak affects the ability to remember (here we also include the presence of the words "remember", "remember" in the lexicon) is to some extent true. In other words, the level of language proficiency in a given period partially affects how well a child will remember this or another event.

This is indicated, for example, by a study conducted with the participation of babies delivered to the department. emergency care... As a result, children over 26 months who could talk about the event at that time recalled it five years later, while children under 26 months old who could not speak remembered little and did not remember anything at all. That is, pre-verbal memories are indeed more likely to be lost if they are not translated into language.

Reason three - cultural characteristics

Unlike simple exchange of information, memories revolve around the social function of sharing experiences with others. Thus, family stories maintain memory availability over time; and increase narrative consistency, including the chronology of events, their theme, etc.

The Maori, aborigines of New Zealand, have the earliest childhood memories - they remember themselves as early as the age of 2.5 years. Researchers believe that this is due to the consistency of the storytelling of the Maori mothers and the tradition of telling family stories with early age... Data analysis on the topic also shows that adults in cultures that value autonomy ( North America, Western Europe) tend to report earlier childhood memories than adults in cultures that value integrity and connectedness (Asia, Africa).

Most of us do not remember anything from the very day of our birth - the first steps, the first words and impressions right up to kindergarten. Our first memories are usually fragmentary, few in number, and alternate with significant chronological gaps. Lack is enough important stage life in our memory has for many decades dejected parents and puzzled psychologists, neurologists and linguists, including the father of psychotherapy Sigmund Freud, who coined the concept of "infantile amnesia" over 100 years ago.

On the one hand, babies absorb new information like sponges. Every second they form 700 new nerve connections, so children learn language and other skills necessary for survival in a human environment with an enviable speed. Recent studies show that the development of their intellectual abilities begins even before birth.

But even as adults, we forget information over time unless we make special efforts to preserve it. Therefore, one explanation for the lack of childhood memories is that childhood amnesia is simply the result of a natural process of forgetting that almost all of us experience throughout our lives.

The answer to this assumption was helped by a study by the German psychologist of the 19th century Hermann Ebbinghaus, who was one of the first to conduct a series of experiments on himself to test the possibilities and limitations of human memory. In order to avoid associations with past memories and study mechanical memory, he developed a method of meaningless syllables - memorizing rows of fictitious syllables of two consonants and one vowel.

Replaying the learned words from memory, he introduced a "forgetting curve", which demonstrates a rapid decline in our ability to recall learned material: without additional training, our brain discards half of the new material within an hour, and by day 30 we are left with only 2-3% of the information received. ...

The most important conclusion in Ebbinghaus's research: forgetting information is quite natural. To find out if the childhood memories fit into it, it was only necessary to compare the graphs. In the 1980s, scientists, after doing some calculations, discovered that we store much less information about the period between birth and age six to seven years than might be expected from the memory curve. This means that the loss of these memories is different from our normal forgetting process.

Interestingly, however, some people have access to earlier memories than others: some may remember events from the age of two, while others may not remember any events from their lives until the age of seven or eight. On average, fragmentary memories, "pictures", appear approximately from the age of 3.5 years. Even more interesting is the fact that the age to which the first memories belong is different for representatives of different cultures and countries, reaching the earliest value at two years.

Could this explain the memory gaps? To establish a possible connection between this inconsistency and the phenomenon of "infantile oblivion," psychologist Qi Wang of Cornell University collected hundreds of memoirs from Chinese and American college students. According to the prevailing stereotypes, american stories were longer, more confused and clearly self-centered. Chinese stories were shorter, mostly factual, and, on average, were six months later than American students.

Numerous studies have shown that more detailed, person-centered memories are much easier to store and relive. A little selfishness helps our memory work, as the formation of our point of view fills events with special meaning.

“There is a difference between the phrases“ There were tigers in the zoo ”and“ I saw tigers in the zoo, and although they were scary, I had a great time, ”-says Robyn Fivush, a psychologist at Emory University.

Imagine dining with someone you have known for several years. Together you celebrated holidays, birthdays, had fun, walked to the parks and ate ice cream. You even lived together. All in all, this someone has spent quite a lot of money on you - thousands. Only you cannot remember any of this. The most dramatic moments in life are your birthday, the first steps, the first words spoken, the first meal, and even the first years in kindergarten- most of us do not remember anything about the first years of life. Even after our first precious memory, the others seem far apart and scattered. How so?

This gaping hole in the annals of our lives has disappointed parents and has puzzled psychologists, neurologists and linguists for decades. Even Sigmund Freud carefully studied this issue, and therefore coined the term "childhood amnesia" more than 100 years ago.

The study of this tabula race led to interesting questions... Do the first memories really speak of what happened to us, or were they composed? Can we remember events without words and describe them? Can we one day bring back the missing memories?

Part of the puzzle stems from the fact that babies are like sponges for new information, forming 700 new neural connections every second and possessing such language learning skills that the most advanced polyglots would turn green with envy. The latest research has shown that they begin to train their minds already in the womb.

But even in adults, information is lost over time if no attempt is made to preserve it. So one explanation is that childhood amnesia is simply the result of the natural process of forgetting things that we encounter during our lives.

The 19th century German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus conducted unusual experiments on himself to find out the limits of human memory. To provide your mind completely clear sheet From where to start, he invented "meaningless syllables" - invented words from random letters like "kag" or "slans" - and began to memorize thousands of them.

His forgetting curve showed a discouragingly rapid decline in our ability to recall what we’ve learned: Left alone, our brains are cleared of half of what we’ve learned in an hour. By day 30, we leave only 2-3%.

Ebbinghaus found the way of forgetting it all was predictable. To find out if the memories of babies are different, we need to compare these curves. After doing calculations in the 1980s, scientists found that we remember much less from birth to six to seven years old, which would be expected from these curves. Obviously, something completely different is happening.

Remarkably, for some, the veil is lifted earlier than for others. Some people can remember events from the age of two, while others do not remember anything that happened to them until they were seven or even eight years old. On average, vague footage starts at three and a half years of age. Even more remarkable, the discrepancies vary from country to country, with the differences in memories reaching an average of two years.

To understand the reasons for this, psychologist Qi Wang of Cornell University collected hundreds of memories from Chinese and American students. As national stereotypes predict, American stories have been longer, defiantly self-centered, and more complex. Chinese stories, on the other hand, were shorter and in fact; on average, they also started six months later.

This state of affairs is supported by numerous other studies. More detailed and self-directed memories are easier to remember. It is believed that narcissism helps in this, since gaining own point vision gives meaning to events.

“There is a difference between these thoughts: 'There are tigers in the zoo' and 'I saw tigers in the zoo, it was both scary and fun,' says Robin Thewush, a psychologist at Emory University.

When Wang ran the experiment again, this time interviewing the mothers of the children, she found the same patterns. So if your memories are hazy, blame your parents.

Wang's first memory is a hike in the mountains near her family's home in Chongqing, China, with her mother and sister. She was about six. But she was not asked about this until she moved to the United States. “In Eastern cultures, childhood memories are not particularly important. People are surprised that someone could ask that, ”she says.

“If society tells you that these memories are important to you, you will keep them,” Wang says. The record for earliest memory belongs to Maori in New Zealand, whose culture includes a strong emphasis on the past. Many can remember the events that took place at the age of two and a half years. "

"Our culture can also determine how we talk about our memories, and some psychologists believe that memories only appear when we master speech."

Language helps us provide structure to our memories, narrative. As the story is created, the experience becomes more organized and therefore easier to remember for a long time, says Thewush. Some psychologists doubt this plays a big role. They say there is no difference between the ages at which deaf children growing up without sign language report their earliest memories, for example.

All this leads us to the following theory: we cannot remember the early years simply because our brain did not acquire the necessary equipment. This explanation follows from the very famous person in the history of neuroscience, known as Patient HM. After unsuccessful surgery to treat his epilepsy, which damaged the hippocampus, HM could not recall any new events. “This is the center of our ability to learn and remember. If I didn’t have a hippocampus, I wouldn’t be able to remember this conversation, ”says Jeffrey Feigen, who studies memory and learning at St. John's University.

Remarkably, however, he was still able to learn other types of information — just like infants. When scientists asked him to copy a five-pointed star pattern while looking at it in a mirror (not as easy as it sounds), he got better with each round of practice, despite the fact that the experience itself was completely new to him.

Perhaps, when we are very young, the hippocampus is simply not developed enough to create a rich memory of the event. Baby rats, monkeys and humans continue to receive new neurons in the hippocampus in the first few years of life, and none of us can create lasting memories in infancy - and all indications are that the moment we stop creating new neurons, we suddenly start form long-term memory. “In infancy, the hippocampus remains extremely underdeveloped,” says Feigen.

But is the under-formed hippocampus losing our long-term memories, or are they not forming at all? Because childhood experiences can influence our behavior later long time after we erase them from memory, psychologists believe that they must remain somewhere. “It is possible that memories are stored in a place that is no longer available to us, but it is very difficult to demonstrate this empirically,” says Feigen.

That said, our childhood is probably full of false memories of events that never happened.

Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, has devoted her career to the study of this phenomenon. “People pick up speculations and visualize them - they become like memories,” she says.

Imaginary events

Loftus knows firsthand how this happens. Her mother drowned in the pool when she was just 16 years old. Several years later, a relative convinced her that she had seen her body floating. Memories flooded her consciousness until a week later the same relative called and explained that Loftus had misunderstood everything.

Of course, who would like to know that his memories are not real? To convince skeptics, Loftus needs overwhelming evidence. Back in the 1980s, she invited volunteers to do research and planted the memories on her own.

Loftus unleashed an intricate lie about a sad trip in shopping center where they got lost, and then were saved by an affectionate an elderly woman and reunited with family. To make the events even more like the truth, she even dragged their families. "We usually tell the research participants that, they say, we talked to your mom, your mom told something that happened to you." Almost a third of the subjects recalled this event in vivid detail. In fact, we are more confident in our imaginary memories than in those that actually happened.

Even if your memories are based on real events they were probably cobbled together and reworked retroactively - these memories are imbued with conversations rather than concrete first-person memories.

Perhaps the biggest mystery is not why we can't remember childhood, but whether we can trust our memories.