ELi5 Why we don’t remember our first four years since birth?
In: 3
This is not exactly true. Many people can remember before their fourth birthday. I can, very well, actually – we moved to a new house a week before I turned four. All of my memories of the old house were from before. I can’t tell you the order of events, and I only remember certain things (mom setting up for a Tupperware party, watching spiders crawl on the stone wall along the driveway, a squirrel getting in the house, water on the floor after a bad storm, etc).
Regardless, there are limits. The structures in the brain that are responsible for forming long term memories mostly form after we’re born. It’s not until after age 1 that we can really start to form real long term memories, and it’s still an immature feature that takes a few years to fully develop. We generally have very limited memories until age 3 or 4, and never anything before 12-18 months.
ELi5 Why we don’t remember our first four years since birth?
In: 3
This is not exactly true. Many people can remember before their fourth birthday. I can, very well, actually – we moved to a new house a week before I turned four. All of my memories of the old house were from before. I can’t tell you the order of events, and I only remember certain things (mom setting up for a Tupperware party, watching spiders crawl on the stone wall along the driveway, a squirrel getting in the house, water on the floor after a bad storm, etc).
Regardless, there are limits. The structures in the brain that are responsible for forming long term memories mostly form after we’re born. It’s not until after age 1 that we can really start to form real long term memories, and it’s still an immature feature that takes a few years to fully develop. We generally have very limited memories until age 3 or 4, and never anything before 12-18 months.
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