Have you ever wondered why you can’t remember anything from when you were a baby?
Even though we learn a lot in our first years of life, most adults can’t recall any specific memories from that time.
This mystery is called infantile amnesia.
For years, scientists believed that the reason we don’t remember being babies is because the hippocampus—the part of the brain that stores memories—wasn’t fully developed yet.
But a new study from Yale University suggests that babies can form memories much earlier than we thought.
In this study, researchers showed babies aged 4 months to 2 years different images of faces, objects, or scenes. Later, they showed the babies a mix of old and new images side by side. If the babies looked longer at a picture they had seen before, it was taken as a sign they recognized it.
At the same time, researchers used a brain scan (called fMRI) to measure activity in the babies’ hippocampus while they looked at the images.
They found that when the hippocampus was more active during the first viewing, the babies were more likely to remember the image later.
This tells us that even very young babies are already using their hippocampus to form episodic memories—memories of specific events—just like adults.
The strongest memory activity was in the posterior hippocampus, the same region adults use to store these types of memories. These effects were especially clear in babies over 12 months old.
This study builds on previous research showing that babies as young as 3 months old use another part of the hippocampus to perform statistical learning, which helps them recognize patterns.
For example, they might learn what restaurants usually look like or the common order of events at mealtime.
This type of learning helps with things like language and vision and may develop earlier than episodic memory.
So if babies can form memories, why can’t adults remember being that young?
There are a few ideas. One is that the memories don’t last long—they simply fade away. Another possibility is that the memories are still stored deep in the brain, but we just can’t access them. The researchers think this second idea might be true.
In fact, they’re now testing whether young children can recognize home videos taken from their baby years. Early results suggest that some of these memories may last into preschool age before fading.
This exciting research hints that our early memories might still exist, locked away somewhere in our brains. Scientists are now exploring whether those hidden memories might even stay with us into adulthood—waiting to be unlocked.
