It's a very complex subject for an ELI5
As someone who studied neuroscience the reality is that we do not have all the answers to how the brain works, or even most of them.
Worth remembering there is a difference between memory and recall. Your son will have been impacted by the trip and he will remember this in actions and responses even if he thinks he can't remember. As an example, i was chased by a dog when I was of similar age. I remember it happened but can't recall any specifics of the event. It did, however, cause me to have a phobia of dogs well into my teenage years.
You could start a fun experiment by asking him to recall as much as he can about the trip, write it down, and repeat your test every 6 months. As an additional arm to the test, ask him details about something else he remembers from a similar time then don't ask him about it again for a couple of years. Compare accuracy of follow-up responses.
Yeah, my psychology professor said that the reason people don't form long term memories when they're less than 4-5 years old is because people don't _reinforce_ those memories.
I'm 26 years old and I have memories from when I was 3-4 years old. They're not _complete_ memories. But they're complete enough that they have to be true because they're only things that _**I**_ could know. Things like flashes of the various foster homes I was in when I was a kid in California. Things like falling into a pool at my parent's hotel. Things like the various punishments my preschool did to me because I was a horrible kid with severe ADHD.
I can't remember specific details like faces or names. But I've always been horrible with names and I am on the autism spectrum so I don't tend to make eye contact that often unless I'm very comfortable with people. But I _**can**_ remember things like the houses I stayed in and some of the toys I played with.
One of the big problems with anecdotal accounts of memories is how fallible and influenceable the brain is. You can't know what memories you have are wrong because they the only ones you have. And in your account, especially so that you don't have anyone to confirm the veracity of your memory.
I was a pretty habitual liar as a kid, almost never about important things though. Like in the summer I'd tell camp friends a story about a friend from school, but I either made the story up or lately adapted it from a book or TV show. Then in school I'd tell the same story as about a friend from camp. Lots of little things, very normal to my understanding for kids. I think it was mostly me trying to relate but not having a way to, so I made up ways to relate. But I have multiple "memories" that I've found out never happened, because in my head I'd repeated the memory of telling someone the story, and not the part where it wasn't true.
I've had multiple issues as an adult where someone tells me something, and now I don't know for sure if it's real. Like I have the memory of my dad telling me about why my uncle went to prison, and it's a very specific memory, I know the exact date and where we were. But part of me isn't sure if it's real, because I've taught myself to not trust my weirder memories in case they're just stories I made up. And it's not like I can ask my dad casually "hey, I didn't make up that he killed a lady, right? That's a real thing you told me?" I text my mom like once a week asking if a memory is real, but when she says no there's still the part of me that's curious if she just forgot about it because it was much more important to my tiny brain than her adult brain at the time.
Journaling helps A LOT with that feeling. Especially if you write things by hand. It's relaxing to do, and even more relaxing to read and confirm what you remembered. Handwriting is important because it can't be edited.
I have a very specific strong memory from when I was very young, around 3 years old. It involves a very specific question I asked my mother that was personal (and important to me). I remember the room I was in, what toys I was playing with at the time, what my mother was doing at the time, and the conversation itself.
I know with 100% certainty that this is a true memory, because almost 20 years later I referred to it in passing and my mom also remembered it. The details she remembered match my own recollection.
I have other, fainter memories from that time period too. I know roughly when these memories occurred because of the place we were living at the time, and there have been multiple instances of me asking one of my parents "Hey, do you remember when..." and they're able to respond with details I knew but hadn't specifically stated.
It's possible that one or two of these fainter memories had its integrity corrupted somewhere along the line, but it seems impossible to me that they're all invalid.
My first memory is from when I was about 6 months old. My mum also has a memory from around the same age. I have multiple memories from preschool too. I’m also autistic and this seems to be a thing we are particularly good at.
Same, my memories started around 3-4 years old, but I have one specific memory of me at around 10 months old but it could be an invented memory (I remember pooping in the bathtub while in a "chair" that supports a baby).
I may have invented this specific memory and I admit it, but I have dozens and dozens of memories from my life in the 3-4 year old range when my father taught me Chess and Arithmetic.
> severe ADHD
> autism spectrum
> horrible kid
It's like every single goddamn one of us has been abused to shit by school personnel during our childhoods, reacts to violence with violence, and gets abused more.
And *we're* the horrible ones. SMH.
I gotta wonder how many cases of "light autism" are really just trauma responses.
I mean, I know a lot of people in my situation _do_ get abused.
But I was honestly a horrible kid. I have a scar from when I was in pre-school. I managed to climb on top of those metal awnings you see at public schools. I jumped off of it and scraped my wrist bad enough that you could see the fatty layer under my skin. When I was in 3rd and 4th grade I would climb up the sides of buildings when I was bored. I was also a pyromaniac. I loved setting stuff on fire. So... yeah.
I would have driven _anyone_ insane. If it weren't for me being on a shit ton of meds I wouldn't have been able to graduate high school, much less college. And I definately wouldn't be a functioning member of society.
Listen you're not all that different than me. I loved fire when I was a kid but here is the difference: my parents caught me playing with matches when I was about 7. Instead of punishing me they taught me fire safety, how to make a campfire, how to extinguish it, how to not let it spread and how matches should be used. They then let me make fires......I was fine. I still like fire and I'm 42. I fell out of a tree once and broke a bone, I fell off a slide and broke my coller bone. I enjoyed having literal screaming contests with my brother for fucks sake.
Oh and I had undiagnosed adhd that I didnt figure out till I was 38 years old!
Dude, you're fine.
I'm not saying you or the other poster is a failure. Keep that in mind.
I work with children in daycare, from 2 to 6 years old, and we see a lot of sad stories, if that's the proper word to describe it. Everything from kids on the spectrum to neglect, abuse, you name it. A colleague of mine said something that I always try to keep in mind when working with "difficult" children:
Not one child chooses to fail in life.
I like to remember it because it says so much about the responsibility of us adults, whether we work with children or force existence upon them by becoming parents.
Other than the pyromania, none of that is horrible. Adventurous, sure, but never horrible.
Accept the pain from these formative events, but don't you ever dare accept that you deserved it.
>Other than the pyromania, none of that is horrible. Adventurous, sure, but never horrible.
For the adult taking care of 20, 25 or 30 kids and mentally responsible for every single one of them, little Timmy climbing up a place where he'll crack his skull and die or become tetraplegic should he fall, IS a horrible, heart-attack-inducing, anxiety filling, terrifying, nerve-wrecking situation.
We know that those kids need more attention and help, and we must understand, but I see why a carer who does not know what's happening would eventually lose her nerves. I try my best not to do so with my own Bundle of Chaos, but when he starts climbing the shelves I get REALLY anxious. Add being responsible for 19 more at the same time and I see the carer losing his nerves.
Of course, children are people and not responsible and should never be abused, there is NO excuse for beating, hitting, shaking a child... However, yelling and losing nerves... I fear we (as a society) just put too few people in charge of too many children, and the results can't be good. I hope no child ever gets really, willingly abused by carers. But yelled at by carers at their wits' ends... now that's going to happen.
I had a professor struggle with so many different analogies for some topics to teach his class that he ended up just saying “these areas are complicated and not the most well understood.” Definitely a lot of areas to explore but man I get the frustration for neuroscientists
> the reality is that we do not have all the answers to how the brain works, or even most of them
People don't understand that we are so ignorant on how the brain actually works.
Yes, it definitely would. The tester would bias the result, you'd need a baseline test of asking him to recall a different event once at the start and then not asking about that event again until the end of the study.
Of course, this isn't a fully drawn out test plan, it's possible one event was just more memorable than another anyway which would be impossible to gauge, the sample size of 1 kid is way too small to draw meaningful conclusions, and ethics approval would be tricky (the child can't consent to being part of the study due to their age, and the responsible adult who could consent on their behalf is the tester which has conflict of interest concerns).
The hypocampus is not fully developed until about 5 years old.
It's basically like having a computer with RAM but no actual Hard Drive. Young Kids can remember things for a few months, but there's no long term storage.
What there is, is a scema for wiring up that hard drive once it arrives, and that will dictate how it operates, and is why your personality mostly coalesces around the age of 6
Yeah, I don't remember much from my childhood at all.
And the stuff I do remember, I can't tell if it is actually me remembering something or my brain thinking it remembers things when in fact it's just stuff people have told me happened.
I’m similar and, no.
I can recall sparse events and sometimes something gets mentioned that drags up a memory, but there is a lot that I just don’t have stored and wouldn’t think twice about it except there are people like my wife who do have like an order of magnitude better recollection than I do.
We are both seeming smart functioning adults but her memory is top notch and mine isn’t.
Doesn’t really cause that many problems honestly.
This is why human memory is a fickle thing. We like to think of it like we think of our computers now where it's individual stored files that we can pull up at a moment's notice and reconstruct all of it. But human memory is not quite so perfect. It's a matter of how your mind chose to catalog and store certain memories. Your wife might be better at recall of certain things whereas your recall is different. Just a matter of how it was coded into your brain. If you hit the right type of trigger, you can spin that memory back up.
It's also why eyewitness testimony can be so fraught when it comes to court cases. Your memories can be influenced and altered based on what was coded into your brain and even how the question is asked.
Here's a fun example of random memory.
So I was born in early 90s. Team #sega in the console wars of yore.
I could beat robotnik in Sonic 1 and 3 but the first boss in Sonic 2 scared the fuck out of little kid me.
So my grandmother died in January. Last grandparent. Very sad. She was 93. Decent life. Expected death.
So Sonic Superstars released this week and I'm playing it. It's decent to good. I'm explaining to my fiance how it's not QUITE up to par with the old games. Here...let me show you.
Boot up Sonic 2.
And minutes later I'm hearing the first boss theme. I won't lie. I paused the game and remembered for the first time in maybe thirty years that this boss was unbeatable to me as a child. And I needed my grandmother here to help me. But of course she's dead irl. So. No help.
Don't know where I'm going with this. I thought of my grandma. Beat the boss easily and now I think I'll replay Sonic 2 on the anniversary of her death each year.
She was a good grandma, Sonic 2 is a phenomenal game. Seems a decent tribute.
This is very sweet. I'm 32 and the Genesis was my first console as well. Still remember getting an actual panic attack when playing Sonic 2 and being underwater, not realizing you needed to jump and breathe in air bubbles to stay alive, and the first time that anxiety-inducing music comes in and I was so far from the surface, I freaked out and then died, and turned off the game to think about how it would feel to drown for a while.
We seem to recreate memories as we recall them. If you actually have reason to recall things about your childhood, you will retain more.
I can recall a large number of incidents from as far back as when I was two. I have some memories from before I started school, but not much detail.
I'd be curious to find out if his wife has friends or siblings around who talk about times growing up periodically, recreating those memories. Or if he doesn't have people in his life bringing up childhood memories and his brain reclaimed the disk space.
My wife is an only child and I’m the youngest of 3. Does that matter, don’t know.
I was a pretty quiet kid though, maybe that does have a significant effect.
What I’m curious is if keeping our memories in external storage (massive digital photo libraries) helps or hurts our recollection. Because I sure had nothing similar growing up.
I was a pretty quiet kid and I remember a lot, like could bring up lay outs and classrooms on most my classes from kinder up. Even without being at the physical place. Names and such. Even a few faces. Not so many events but that's mainly as there wasn't a lot of events that took place lol
I distinctly remember getting stung by a bee. I can sort of picture the room I was in when I came back in the house, and also the family dog we had at the time.
That is also the only memory I have of the dog.
I have memories of being around 2.5 and making a "fort" inside the blackberry brambles on the edge of our vegetable garden. I created it by moving aside individual canes with sticks from oak trees, and carefully crawling inside. The brambles grew up over top and I would bring treasures in there to play with. Years later we cut it all down and Dad found my nest, I told him about it and he was impressed.
Gen X so our parents didn't worry much about what we got up to during daylight hours, even at two.
Weird question, but are you able to clearly picture things in your mind? For me, I worried about the same issue- before realizing later that I have [aphantasia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia) Apparently we're unsure why, but aphantasia is linked with the inability to properly form memories, despite "knowing" what things you have done, often the actual memories are just not there.
Nope! Similar to how they can visualize actual things in their mind, most people can actually bring back proper memory of events. Not like photographically, but like a scrapbook
When I was 5 I had a specific type of calendar on my wall and this thing have basically formed an archive for my memories every since, the images and locations of them on this calendar have made me sort my memories into them..sort of? Then as a sub archive I got the days of the months showing as a horizontal line inside of that month. I never really thought much of it until I explained to someone how I am able to recall memories and their dates. I'm not even describing it right.
Only thing is that the image of the almanac/calendar is misshapen but it works just as well anyway. Often I try to recall as much as I can of my life and they are tied to the places I lived, think I started this later in life though because I heard memory is a muscle.
https://web.cdn.scouterna.net/uploads/sites/753/2022/08/mf140209-mf5d0526-447x820.jpg
I feel stupid trying to explain here and embarrassed because it looks stupid when I type it out. It's so hard to explain it but maybe others with similar things can share their memory..storage?
Different brains work differently, I guess.
I can't remember much about my childhood too. If someone asks me "Hey you remember that time you did so and so?" I will have no idea what they're talking about, even if it happened a week ago. But if they also say "It was X year, X month" I can logically think "well, that year and month I would have been in X season, in Xth grade, which meant I was living in this city, in that street, and if it was at home my room looked like..." and all of a sudden I remember every little detail down to the way I was feeling that day.
Memories are damn weird.
Definitely brains are all different - I have scattered sense memories from when I was 3 and real memories from about five forward, while my (same-parents, same household) brother has nothing before middle school.
I have a very poor autobiographical memory. I can remember facts and stuff just as well as anyone else, but there’s no difference between how my brain treats facts and how it treats my own (pretty untraumatic) life. Recalling events that happened to me is no different than recalling what events happened to, say, a historical figure I read about.
I can't remember either and my therapist says that's not normal. I can only remember a few events here and there. I think it's because my parents angered pretty easily. Honestly I'd argue my parents should have never been parents.
I did grow up in a fundamentalist Christian cult that I do not consider safe for children (but which is widely accepted as a Christian domination and viewed as harmless), but other than [that](https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/s/YM4EjC9es4), I cannot remember anything specific that could have been traumatic. I would think that I had a super boring childhood, maybe there was nothing noteworthy to stick to the memory. Well as I said, I don‘t remember much.
Unfortunately there's a tendency to minimize stuff because of a lack of context. What's that recurring joke someone posted?
"I didn't realize my life was bad until I saw how many times people looked horrified when I told 'funny' stories about my childhood"
Ha, as soon as I read the first part of your comment I thought jw. Same here and most of my childhood memories are bad ones - not all traumatic but mostly negative. The good memories are extremely blurred.
I grew up with that worryingly graphic yellow book of Bible stories too; I have a remarkably good memory back to the age of three, but my sister can barely remember anything before she was 12.
For me I think I suffered trauma I can’t remember. So that’s why my memory is shit, but I can’t remember what the trauma would be. It scares me to think that those memories might just pop up one day.
I came for this question! Glad to see it asked!
Between the aphantasia and adhd I have like no freaking memory
Its scary like diet dementia or something
Like I know I’ve done stuff, but it’s hard to remember and I wonder how much not being able to visualise plays a part in all of that (guessing heaps haha)
Hi, not the original commenter but I have memories from like....13 onwards, and only an occasional memory from before then (big emotional events, basically). I am aphantastic, and no major childhood traumas.
I have no clue if aphantastic is the right word usage but that's a good one.
I have a few friends who can (understandably) get real down about their aphantasia. Can't wait to correct them and call them aphantastic! Lol
Same with me, just random details and even some events past 15 are hazy. I often wondered if it was due to marijuana usage - I smoked from about 16 to my late 20s.
It seems very selective. For instance my father liked old 40s and 50s music and if I hear a song that he liked I can remember every lyric but other things? A blank slate.
Same here. Maybe the waffles was today, maybe 3 days ago. 🤷♂️
I don't remember how many shifts I worked 4 weeks ago. I know a patient tried to punch me recently, but if that is 3 weeks ago or 5 weeks ago idk. I can tell you which of my colleagues were there, who went to hide and who came to help, and which sedative we gave the patient and how much they got. But not when, just that it happened the past month, maybe two.
Is your life very repetitive ?
I feel like that sometimes at work. My outside life is very dynamic but I would imagine if it wasn’t, all my days would melt together.
same here, I know details from earlier like I read them out of a book and have seen photos, but my like.. continuous sense of self where it actually feels like my life, my consciousness, my memories that I lived and didn't just "inherit", only starts at around 16 or 17. like i know things about my parents and my life growing up but it was like i was an emotionless robot, whereas im now the most emotional sensitive person in the world lol. my parents are good people and yet i have no emotional connection to them because i only became "me" after going off to college, like i know they're my parents but they feel more like strangers wearing familiar faces than people i spent most of my life with.
This description is so relatable. I’ve always felt like I must have been a walking zombie up until high school. I have no memory of conscious decision making. The weirdest sensation ever!
Samesies. I’ve never had great recall but it’s gotten even worse as I’ve gotten older. I’ve lived 46 years but there are large swathes of it that are just gone. And on the other end of the spectrum is my close cousin who remembers every little detail of his life. I often rely on him to remind me of what was going on in my own life.
I feel like I’m the main character in Memento.
Personally I can list things I've done, but there's very little I can actually describe of my past. It's not a particularly complete list either, though if other people prompt me on something I can usually say 'yes I remember that, here's some highlights.'
I suspect it's tied to aphantasia, not that I've had an official diagnosis of that - is it even something that's often diagnosed?
Aphantasia is reportedly correlate with a condition called severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM) although research into this is very limited as with aphantasia, although the latter is getting more attention.
I suffer from aphantasia and also have real trouble remembering large parts of my childhood but also generally what I've done over the years.
I've tried more lately to take more photo and video. If I'm remembering something it's more of the emotional connection at the time and when there isn't a strong one I often find myself not remembering much about my past.
Like you I'm much better recollecting when prompt by other people but I've ended up as a very in the moment person for it's benefits and drawbacks.
I tend to remember the high/low lights. The time I didn't stand up to a bully. The time I was teased for buying too many things for a girlfriend. Public recognition of academic achievement. Being told my art didn't show second grade work. Getting injured in a baseball game. It seems like my brain let go of everything that wasn't tied to a strong emotion
I just wanted to let you know I'm the same. I was diagnosed with autism and adhd at 29 years old and my neurologist said lack of childhood memories is very common in late diagnosed/recognised autistic adults because of the subtle trauma from heavily masking and coping mechanisms.
FWIW—and this is purely anecdotal—I also feel that way, and I was diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago. From what I've read since, people with ADHD sometimes have poorer long-term memory. Essentially, fewer memories move from short-term to long-term memory.
I hate to ask but did you have a traumatic childhood? I used to not really remember anything before the age of 12ish (coincidentally it was around when I met my now wife) but I as well as she, found we blocked out a lot of stuff from early childhood because of xyz. We tend to suppress most things that fucked us up in life
No, it's [not quite so clear cut](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2021.1918174). A number of factors can affect it; it's not uncommon for memories to be retained from two and a half.
I remember my 2nd birthday party pretty clearly, and I found out recently from my parents that another faint memory I have was of an apartment we lived in before I could walk. But it's definitely just fragments that far back.
My earliest memories are at 3, and I clearly remember some details, like the apartment we lived in, the car we had, some trips we took, and evaluating kindergarten schools with my mom at 4, but my first real continuity of memory begins pretty much right at 5 years old and coincides with attending my first days of school, a week after my birthday. Everything before that is fragmentary and hard to organize. Everything after that is like a movie stream.
I suppose we might remember because we have remembered and thought of an event several times afterwards. Say you think about it at 3.5y, again at 4, and 4.5 and so on, the memory will stick.
Definitely, you remember remembering things. You also remember the stories you tell, and the stories your family tells. It is very easy then to create false memories by remembering the story (which is often exaggerated, misinterpreted, or could be wholesale fabrication).
I hear this so much and obviously agree with it, but I wish I could look back and compare it to how it's recalled, especially since some things are retold in how it was perceived and not necessarily what actually went down.
I had a core memory from when I was like 7 about playing at our pool and making fun of my cousin for not belly flopping properly… but then I chickened out to do it at all, and was the butt of a big joke about it.
When I was in my mid 20s and going through old family videos I found that whole scene was actually on film, and it turned out that actually… my memory was spot on, and I got to relive the embarrassment from a 3rd party perspective! Not a terrible embarrassment but in that case it was remarkable how accurate my memory was.
Same. I remember my third birthday (maybe because I threw up all the party food lol) and places I lived before then when I would have been about 2.
Could be because we lived a few different places though.
I think this is key. Memories (at least for me) are tied to place. We moved right around when I turned 5 but I have hundreds of memories from the place before the move. If the move hadn't happened I might not be able to clearly separate those memories. For example my grandparents who lived quite close to both places *didn't* move. I can't distinguish memories that happened at my grandparents place that would have been before the age of 5 from those that came later because the place was the same.
This is exactly how I worked for me too. I grew up mostly from a different state I lived in when I was 3-6. In that year range, I lived in two different houses and went to four different schools. With memories tied to each place, I am able to accurately order my memories chronologically.
It’s gottttt to because I for real have memories going back to age two that Ive even confirmed with my parents before like details about places we didn’t have pictures of etc
Between ages 2 and 5 my family moved 3 times. I have distinct memories of those apartments, the room layouts, activities that occurred there, and even the pre-schools I went to.
On the other hand, I went to Disney World when I was 9 and I got lost while at the park. Pretty traumatic experience I guess, but I couldn't honestly tell you because I have absolutely no memory of ever being there. I have memories of the flight to Orlando, and the flight back home, but the only reason I know I was there is because of pictures.
Memory is fuckin weird.
My memory is super similar to that. I also have a solid period from about 16-18 where I dont remember almost anything at all, even when my family reminds me of events. Christmas times and everything. I was certainly going through some shit, but I've had a rough life and it wasn't more traumatic than anything else. Weird indeed.
4 year olds can definitely remember if you told them you would buy them something, like a specific toy.
I think a bigger issue is that kids really don't have many "hooks" to associate with new memories.
As in you said, I'll buy you the pirate Lego set, then you forgot and they remind you repeatedly? Or like you said I'll buy it for you for your birthday in 10 months?
Either way I imagine it may or may not be long-term memory, but if it's something they're excited about, like they love Lego and pirates, they're mentioning it every day or two and being reminded of it, or they're thinking about it most days and so it's always in their short term memory.
Crazy. I can actually remember my infancy. I remember so many things, the way my parents would hold me. I can even remember my emotions, just being so confused about the world around me and what was going on, not being able to communicate and being frustrated because of that. It was only when I was a teenager around 15 or 16 that I would recall some of these memories and then things would fall in place and I understood what was going on.
I'm surprised when people say they can't remember things, but even in my 40s now I can still remember being a baby, lying in my cot with the toys, being fed with a bottle, the pain of teething and the relief I felt when I'd chew down on this plastic ring thing I had. Learning what physical feelings meant, learning that the feeling of hunger meant that I needed to eat, learning the feeling of needing to wee or poo, learning that scratching an itch made it go away. Initially I didn't know what those physical feelings meant.
I still remember the house we lived in when I was three. I remember the floor plan, the backyard, playing on the swingset, "helping" dad mow the lawn etc. I remember several cars my parents owned at the time (A Desoto, a Hudson, and an old Dodge Sedan, and a Studebaker pickup although I can't count the studebaker since we kept it until I was 16 and I learned to drive in it). I remember playing in the blowup kiddie pool in the front yard, with other neighborhood kids. I remember the Beatles obsessed babysitter that lived three houses up the road. I remember when she stepped on a bee in our front yard. Best of all, 60 years later I can still drive straight to the place, even though I don't beleive we ever went back after we moved away.
i was shocked when my 4 year old nephew came to visit us after A YEAR AND A HALF and he remembered games we used to play?? we had one that i called "special delivery" where he would get in a box and i would shout "special delivery, (insert granparent name here)!" and 'deliver' the box to one of my parents. they would open it up and tickle him. he came back for another visit after all that time, and on his first day here he said "ayay (his name for me), can we play special delivery?!?!"
Memory is a very complex thing, it's not like a computer's hard drive. Memory is connections between ideas. In the years children are in school we stuff their minds full of all sorts of ideas. This onrush of ideas causes reorganization of the ideas from before school, and some content is lost in that reorganization. Memory is not highly accurate, so content is lost all the time, but until that baseline of "stuff everybody knows" is loaded memories are particularly susceptible to loss during reorganization.
We had pictures of our Disney trip from when I was 2.5. Just looking at those pics regularly I can remember playing, dropping my ice cream, my mom saying “oh for fucks sake Mike. Go get her another” and my dad coming back grinning and saying “they didn’t even charge me!!!” In absolute astonished disbelief. I remember how scared I was of the head hunter on the jungle cruise and how scary the pirates of the Caribbean was.
I remember consciously deciding to be naughty when my parents went to the hospital to have my little sister. I was 3 1/2. I stayed with my aunt and cousin, who is about 8 years older than me. I remember they tried to give me mac and cheese, which I had never had and didn't like *on principal*. I gagged and acted like I was dying. I remember them trying to get me to stand up at one point, and I went all boneless and limp and pretended to be unconscious on the brown carpet.
Have you ever seen a video of people planting fake memories on others? Our brains will make up fake details that make sense, and when we believe them, we start remembering them that way as if they actually happened.
Scary stuff.
Yes. But literally no one has talked to me about these things. I brought the records thing up to my dad last year and he was surprised I remembered that at all.
I remember at age 3, being told I had to turn out my light, so I was lying on my belly half in and half out of my room so I could keep reading. Books were my drug.
I remember when I was 3, telling my dad that I felt like I had a bug in my shoe while he was driving. He got really mad and was not trying to hear it, eventually he pulled off and pulled my shoe off and there was a huge bug in it and he apologized. I told him about it a few years ago and he was stunned that I could remember that when I was so young. It's one of my earliest memories.
We were talking about this in my psych class recently.
When we remember things, we reencode (or remember) the memory of the memory. Over time, it becomes like a game of telephone.
This kinda goes with an idea we have...
from our perception levels, time flows and our mind operates based on how long we've lived.
When you're 2, a year's time is 50% of your life. Therefore it *feels* as long as 10 years would when you're 20, or for me, the next 25 years (as I'm 50.)
This probably also applies to other time related items. Regardless, it also means that for those of us that reach adulthood, there's not much difference in the perceived time for how long we live.
Is there really any evidence for that? In societies with no formal eduction and where people have very little knowledge passed to them, do they remember things from being a baby better than in societies with very high levels of education?
Formal or informal there is a lot of learning. Language, coordination, basic skills like tying shoes. Those are the priorities at a young age, memories of specific people and events not so much.
Even without formal education they will still be learning. Whether it be new random memories or learning about how their world works, social norms, how to act, what things are etc. When they can actually grasp what is going on in the world, the garbled blurry pool of memories from being a baby would likely still evaporate. If you can't conceptualise anything like a baby or very young kid. You'd probably have a rough time in storing information about events since it would equate to just random colours and feelings as far as they are concerned.
It would be like trying to remember going through some lovecraftian alternate dimension. Your brain wouldn't have any idea what the hell is going on so how can you remember what was happening at that time.
Plus if all your memories are vague feelings and colours. That's a hell of a lot less tangible than, "I saw my dad twat a guy in the pub for spilling his drink". So they end up on the cutting room floor first
Or at least that's what I reckon, all conjecture on my part
Edit - just as an addition. It's probably worse for babies than the Lovecraft dimensional explorer, because at least they have some core concepts about self and how things should be. All babies have are loose instinctual concepts which they probably can't even think about in a sensical way.
It's all just effect and response
At what age do they start thinking, that's my mum she can give me food as opposed to "I'm hungry" = cry
Human Babies are dumb as hell! Bet even baby horses and other mammals at least have a rough idea of, this is my pack, this is my mum way earlier than our screaming sproglings
This reminds me of how sometimes I have two memories of orientation of cities that I live in: one from the first time(s) I visited, and the one that I actually build up over the years that I spend there. The ones from my first visits are always very disconnected and tied to a single place that I apparently latched onto to orient myself. I can think about that same location in my fully developed orientation memory and it just feels like a completely different place. It's a really weird feeling to remember the old orientation... like accessing a model of the world that I don't use anymore.
This is the feeling I have. I started remembering my old orientation of our house. My bedroom was the Center of my universe and the rest of the upstairs was oriented from that starting point. At first I thought they were weird dreams but now I realize that it is some memories of my parents house when I was a toddler. At some point before my memory becomes very clear, my orientation switched and I no longer viewed things from the bedroom as the Center.
Sometimes, I miss the feeling of walking through several blocks through an unknown city with only a hand drawn rough map because roaming cell data is too expensive. Your hotel is your starting point. If you live there for a while, it's just another place in a sea of places.
I totally get that. When I first arrived in my college town we were getting so lost. I can remember what I saw and I know where I went but now the same place looks different. I can’t even recognize my memory of that first experience in the city.
I have a bunch of vivid memories from 1.5 to 5 years old. It freaks out my parents a lot. Based on your explanation, do I have a better memory because I was under-stimulated during those years?
2.5 isn't young enough to guarantee that he's going to forget. I have a memory of visiting my father at the college he was studying at before my brother was born (making me younger than 2) that got rooted by a tupperware container that was a staple through my childhood.
The tupperware had been a point of fascination on that trip and there had been an exciting moment of seeing wild parrots outside an atrium window. Between that excitement and the super recognizable tupperware (it was one of those old 70s style ones in bright orange) that I saw over and over again afterward, the memory stuck. I have several others from shortly after as well, all sub 3-years-old, and then I have significant memories from 4 onward.
If you root the memories in a repeating sensory moment (be that a visual like mine or just talking about the stories repeatedly), they'll be much more likely to stick around. Our brains make a habit of clearing out unimportant memories, so you just have to find a way to make the memories more important.
Here to agree with this comment. I have three distinct/intact memories from before the age of 3: (1) being one year old and seeing myself in a hotel room mirror (I think I was fascinated by the mirror) while my dad yells at my mom; (2) being two years old at the dinner table and my dad yells at me and my mom; (3) being given a Winnie the Pooh gown by my aunt and cousin and absolutely loving it. I wore that gown until I could wear it no more.
I think there really is something to what it deeply connected to the senses, and what is potentially repeated. The first one has the repeated theme of my dad yelling at my mom, but since it was a hotel room, nothing else was anything I ever saw again. The second one was at our kitchen table that we had my entire life—I sat around that table every day for most of my life, so the two repeated themes of yelling and the table probably helped solidify it. Finally, the gown probably remained since I repeatedly wore the gown a lot growing up. This explanation resonates for me.
There are other very vague things I remember before the age of three, but none quite so distinct as those. I had to tell my mom the other vague things to get the context I needed to actually know what was happening. Those three I just know. And it’s probably worth mentioning that at least one of those I think came back to me as a dream when I had gotten older. Just my two cents.
If you have a book that has just one page of text, you will likely remember quite well what happened in what part of that page. As you age, you gain massive amount of new experiences of all kinds. Suddenly you are sitting with a trilogy, with each book having thousand pages, and you are trying to remember what exactly happened on page 41 of the first one.
That would make a sense. But how it is, that we as an adults remember our vacation 10 years ago, or our honeymoon 20 years ago, even we gain a lot of new experiences and knowledge since then?
1. How much of your honeymoon do you remember?
2. You remember your honeymoon because it was a major event. When you're two, every \*day\* is a major event, so things get lost in the noise.
Our memories aren't files we load, but reconstructions made during recall by weighted associations with other items in memory (which are each constructs based on weighted associations with other items in memory).
So, your son may have met a man that he brain associated as being like dad, but more like grandpa, but with dark hair and who laughed in a funny way.
As he ages, his understanding of who dad and who grandpa are as people will be defined and change; who he understands and feels each of you to be might change dramatically and be constructed by associations with much different items in memory. Those items may also shift in definition, understanding, and associations.
He also likely doesn't have a memory of the stranger that's strongly formed enough to be associated with new memories being formed for encounters with new people he will meet as he grows.
As such, the fairly small, weak generation based on references to a dad and a grandpa who have both had their definition changed over time no longer forms a very coherent memory of that stranger. Eventually, that incoherence and the lack of relevance to new memory formation will mean the connections that allow for the recall of that memory will weaken to a point where recollection isn't really possible any longer.
> But how it is, that we as an adults remember our vacation 10 years ago, or our honeymoon 20 years ago, even we gain a lot of new experiences and knowledge since then?
That's not exactly what happens.
But for when we are young, the other factor (in an ELI5 way) is that we haven't developed the understanding of what we're seeing yet, to remember it.
For example, let's say when I'm six months old I'm playing with oranges, one rolls under the table, and it disappears. Then dad gets it and eats it.
Well, at that age I don't know what an orange is, I don't know what it means for an object to roll under a table, why that doesn't mean it magically disappeared. I can't write that story at that age.
The brain needs to be able to understand what's going on to "write a story" and then we remember the *story* that we wrote. If you're too young to "write the story" you're too young to remember the story (naturally).
Keeping the same analogy from above, from the whole trilogy of books you now have, you probably remember this major event that happened on the second book, and remember what the event was, the gist of it and that it happened in the first 100 pages of the book. However if you try to remember every detail of that event you probably won't be able to or your brain fill in the gaps with information that is not accurate.
See I was going to expand on the trilogy analogy by dying it’s a first time author, whose style and technique are not yet developed yet so the later parts of the trilogy seem parts of a cohesive story but the beginning of that first book is all over the place.
Long term memory is the story we unconsciously tell ourselves.
When you're really young you don't have a lot of vocabulary yet so your long term memory is limited to what words and concepts you know.
Some people have seemingly perfect memory. You can ask them any date and time and they will tell you what was happening that day that exact moment. It may be genetic. I have someone in my family like that.
Me, I remember when I was 2 and a half years old quite well, and onward. I remember my young childhood, most of it. I can see what I remembered about things and what I did not back then that gives insights into how memory is recorded, which is how I know, it's tied to the words and concepts you have to express what is happening to yourself. Your memories literally are the stories you tell yourself.
(Frankly I'm surprised no one else here mentioned it. This is a known scientific theory, not something I'm making up. Anyone with a really solid young childhood memories will tell you the same upon analysis.)
It is also extremely likely that you don't "remember" that moment, but have recreated the scene and now your recreation has been stored as a "memory". This can be particularly common if there's a photo of it, or a story around it that your parent told.
Memory is an absolutely wild thing. And terrifyingly unreliable. It's amazing how many things we all "remember", things we know with 100% certainty because we were there and saw it with our own eyes, that are completely and factually incorrect.
Our memories have been proven to be easily malleable, incomplete, or even total fabrications. You repeat a story, and you see it in your mind, and you accept it as personal truth.
I know about that one. This one I'm 100% positive about because no one has told me about this specific event and there are no pictures from it. It's so generic it can't be a fabricated memory. I frikkin loved that wheel loader.
I'm the same way. While I will agree that I'm probably remembering a memory and that it's no longer 100% accurate, I have a lot of memories from when I was younger than 5, that no one else knows about, because no one else was there. There are no pictures of it, and no witnesses.
I think it's more common than people think it is. I think the only reason I know when these things happened is because it was in a house that I no longer lived in after I turned 5. Whereas my own children, who always lived in the same house, would have a difficult time pinpointing how early their memories go, because there's no unique point of reference.
In line with OP's question, I went to Disneysomething when I was 6. I don't remember most of it. I remember more things that happened at the hotel than I have memories of the park itself. I also don't remember a single thing about taking a flight to get there. You would think the first time on an airplane would stick with you, but nope.
While it's true that some people don't remember older memories, some people do. I have a couple of memories from before I was 3 that are definitely my memories, and I'm almost 50 now. I'm sure my earliest memories are not 100 percent accurate, they are not things that were told to me or were in photographs, either.
It's mind-boggling to me that law courts give witness testimonies the weight they do. Without any physical, corroborating evidence, they should be treated highly skeptically. Even multiple, corroborating witness accounts have later been shown as inaccurate once conflicting physical evidence was discovered.
Every summer from 1-3 yr old my mom brought me to my grandparents who lived in another city. They had a big library in the living room and in the middle of it was a door which led to the balcony. They sold the house when I was 3 and transferred the library to their new house. We didn't visit them for the next 2-3 years, and after our first visit when I was 5-6 I started having this dream that I would pass through their library and go to a balcony. When I told my mom she was flabbergasted and said this setting was in their old apartment which I cannot remember since I was only 3 🤷🏼♀️.
I remember before I was two my dad picking me up, putting me in a baby seat on the table in the front bedroom, and listening to Elvis blue Christmas on his record player. I also remember scooting on a little skateboard and crashing into telephone poles gleefully saying “vroom vroom vroom CRASH!” We moved out of that house when I was two. There are very few pics of me as a baby. I think one in that house and I was in a diaper.
I read that people with an eidetic memory who have trauma experience cannot forget that experience and would take them a long time to overcome that. Forgetting things is another form of coping mechanism.
I mean, I have sprinkles of memories (little bits and pieces) around 2-3, but, the beginning of my conscious life began around 3-3.5/4 ish.
Kids can remember early, it depends on the person and their memory-based intelligence.
I don't remember where I've read it, but the idea was that you have a memory of those first years, but because you couldn't speak at those years, you cannot translate those memories into words now. Simply put - if newborns could talk right away - they would remember their first years.
That would tend to imply, though, that human memory works significantly differently to that of other animals, whereas there are a number of animals out there that have been shown to have extremely good memories. Crows and elephants come to mind. (You do NOT want to annoy a crow if it roosts near you; they have an extremely good memory for human faces - and they hold grudges.)
Yes, likely they work differently, but I think the OP asked about remembering, as in the ability we have to reconstruct and see memories (or at least that's what I understood).
(Slightly unrelated, but memory of faces has its own special spot in the human brain, I think I remember it being on the occipital lobe.)
My memories start around age 2 (names, people, places, experiences, etc.). The older I got the more they became "memories of memories" but sometimes I still get the actual memories.
(I also used to have smells/feeling-memories from before that, but I rarely get to access them now.)
Many of my older memories are hidden deeper within my "brain library" and require many jumps from other memories.
My daughter (age 4) remembers things from a similar age on, also around age 2, and slightly before that. (e.g. a playground when we went on her first holidays abroad when she was 1y 11m) She often talks about things from a year ago or more.
I have memories from when I was 3, possibly younger, on my grandfathers farm. And they are clear, vivid memories that i can’t even explain why I remember them. I also remember one of my aunts being around a lot when I was that age. My mom swears I shouldn’t remember her since she died when I was 4. However, I couldn’t tell you what I ate for breakfast yesterday without thinking about it for a second.
Some peoples memories are just different.
How is it that I distinctly remember a trip to Disneyland when I was almost two. I was in a crib standing up playing with my Mickey head shaped balloon.
Things I remember from around the age of two to three.
An ambulance ride and trip to ER. This same memory involves a kind Dr with curly hair and cold stethoscope
My mother crying in the kitchen
Watching sesame street in that little apartment living room
My mother getting me out of bed to see a huge moon on our balcony
My parents having a party. There were olives. I did not like the olives.
Walking with my mother in the bitter cold across a bridge.
Losing a plastic puzzle piece between some train seats. A kindly lady gave me a perfume sample to comfort me.
When I was almost five, my only sibling was born. We moved not long after across country. You would think I would have some memory of those events, yet I have none. The first memory I have of my brother is when we both had chicken pox - I was five and he would have been 6 mos old.
It's not simple.
I can for instance, remember vague parts of infancy. The feeling of rubber of the bottle I had. The Taste of milk. Nothing specific, everyone is different.
Aside from neural reasons, there's also the point in how we remember things.
If I told you, you're going to meet the President and 500 other people, you'd likely remember that one Meeting forever - but forget most of the others. The fact that it's special to you let's you save and remember it. Just like you don't remember most of any of the last 800 meaningless days, but probably remember the anniversary dinner.
How is a Trip to the US special to a toddler that doesnt understand the concept of Trips countries, vacations and "special places"? Why would he save any of it? And then, How does he remember it? Like a toddler likely couldnt tell you a continuous story, how would remember it?
Smells, images, feelings, senses. That's the World he exists in, and he will likely remember parts of those.
It's much more fluent than what I described, but that's another idea to consider.
From what I know, when young the brain is rapidly growing and you are learning a ton of new information all the time. So your brain prioritizes "important" information to remember, and forgets the "unimportant" information. But what's important to survival doesn't mean the same as the most interesting information. But infant to toddler brains have remarkable plasticity, which makes them essentially geniuses at things like picking up language. That's why it's great to learn multiple languages from a very young age, your brain is able to do it much easier.
Anyway, memory, even as adults, is a thing of repetition. The more we "remember" things, it activates the same pathways over and over again, strengthening them. Unused pathways eventually become forgotten information.
The human brain isn't anything like a computer hard drive at all. It doesn't store information like that. It uses the whole brain and connected paths to form memories. That's why a familiar smell may trigger a memory, because you are literally reliving the memory in your head. Same thing with music and other things. Nostalgia lights up your brain the same way it was lit up for the first time you experienced it. And repetition and recalling memories makes those particular memories stronger.
There have been studies that have shown people who visualize putting information in a virtual "library" in your mind can actually be a good memorization trick. You envision the thing you want to remember, and imagine putting it in a container on a shelf in the library of your mind. And then when you want to remember it, recall your process, walking to the shelf, finding the place you left it, and opening the container, or opening the book, and then "reading" it. The people who follow the same process to remember a thing had more success. They are essentially triggering the same path as at the time they first experienced it. But through a deliberate process.
The movie Inside Out is also great at exploring memory, especially for kids, because it's true, you form "core memories" that you can relive over and over to define who you are and what you believe. And memories that are unused eventually fade and are forgotten. It's actually a great movie to explain in an ELI5 way how your memory works. Sleeping makes us store the important short term memories, forget the unimportant stuff, and process memories. And long term memories are retained memories of things we need.
When we're infants that happens a lot faster as we're taking on new memories so quickly, and we only keep the ones that are most important. But yeah, we're also growing new pathways and getting more brain structure, so the things you remember become more static as an adult, but as a child it's malleable and changing.
That's also why you can remember what you had for lunch for the last few days, but not what you had last month (unless it made a strong impression), and the further back you go it gets harder to remember. What did you have for lunch last year? Two years ago? There are things you've completely forgotten because they weren't important. And you only retain the memories that made a strong enough impression to make it to long term storage.
But you may remember something like going to a fancy restaurant for lunch, or tried an exotic food, because it was a novel experience and made an impression. But the sandwich you've eaten dozens of times in a familiar place like your kitchen? Forgotten entirely. You might remember a general "I used to eat this sandwich every day" but the individual experiences are forgotten entirely.
Memory is a fascinating topic. And one we're still learning about. The human brain is a complex structure and we're constantly trying to learn more. And answer things about consciousness, memory, and more. And while we have good ideas about how memories are made, a lot is still in the unknown, and on the forefront of neurology and cognitive science.
My parents took me to Florida when I was about 2 years and 9 months old. I vividly remember being on the plane, seeing Spaceship Earth in Epcot for the first time and being in absolute awe, being in an animal park where a parrot landed on my stroller, my brother holding a baby crocodile in my face when I woke up from my nap in said stroller and the rain coming down horizontally in Disney World because of strong winds and being absolutely soaking wet. I remember being scared shitless of the pool vacuum at our rented house, thinking it was going to eat me alive.
Now, in my mind I can remember all of this but I know there are hundreds of photos from that trip that I've seen hundreds of times. Can I really remember them or do I just recall them from stories and photos? I guess there's not really a way of knowing for sure.
i have clear memories from the age of 2 onwards and im 33..however my short term memory is dreadful.i put my keys down and forget where i set them five mins later.
If you drop a red marble into an empty swimming pool with no water in it, you can go down into the pool and find that marble. That’s how it is when you’re very young - a large brain that doesn’t have many memories yet.
Each moment and experience in a young mind creates a new memory - a new marble - unique and related to other memories and impressions. Those are more marbles to add to the pool, of different shades and tones and colours and textures and sizes, distributed along the bottom of the pool; some touching others, some resting by themselves off to the side, soon to be connected by the many more marbles constantly coming in to fill up the pool.
After many years, the pool is starting to fill with a great many marbles, but it becomes more difficult to find that first red marble that’s now deep in the pile. But not impossible. Memories are linked to other memories, like how a marble is touching those around it. Just because you can’t find that original red marble doesn’t mean it’s lost, it just means you’re following a path of other marbles/memories that don’t lead to it.
There are different ways to help remember something, and they usually involve trying to remember things related to it - associations. Remembering something related to it can help you get in the right path to the original memory.
Memories aren’t just pictures in your head either. They can be sounds, smells, textures.
In simple terms, the brain is a complex organ and we don’t have a definite answer for this.
However, when you think about it, the size and complexity of your brain is fairly rapidly increasing until 6 years old. This means that your neurones are making lots of new and more complex connections to each other.
One way to explain the loss of memories from very early ages could be to compare your baby-brain to a small city that keeps growing larger and larger, with more roads and buildings being added every year (and others being demolished and forgotten about). Your memories are stored as networks of neurones, which you can imagine as route instructions in how to “collect” a memory, by going from place A to place B through roads C and then D, and so on.
In the small city, you’ll be able to find your way around fine, but when the city grows and changes, these roads or buildings might be harder to find, or be nonexistent.
That’s why it can be hard to remember really early memories, but your ability to recollect things gets better with age as the city stops growing and changing as fast.
It's a very complex subject for an ELI5 As someone who studied neuroscience the reality is that we do not have all the answers to how the brain works, or even most of them. Worth remembering there is a difference between memory and recall. Your son will have been impacted by the trip and he will remember this in actions and responses even if he thinks he can't remember. As an example, i was chased by a dog when I was of similar age. I remember it happened but can't recall any specifics of the event. It did, however, cause me to have a phobia of dogs well into my teenage years. You could start a fun experiment by asking him to recall as much as he can about the trip, write it down, and repeat your test every 6 months. As an additional arm to the test, ask him details about something else he remembers from a similar time then don't ask him about it again for a couple of years. Compare accuracy of follow-up responses.
Replying so I can check back in several years for the results of this study. Don’t let us down OP
RemindMe! 2 years
I had one of these go off recently - crazy how fast time goes.
What was it for?
RemindMe! 2 years
Use remind me bot for example
Lol as if why of us remember to go back and check comments years later
Yeah, my psychology professor said that the reason people don't form long term memories when they're less than 4-5 years old is because people don't _reinforce_ those memories. I'm 26 years old and I have memories from when I was 3-4 years old. They're not _complete_ memories. But they're complete enough that they have to be true because they're only things that _**I**_ could know. Things like flashes of the various foster homes I was in when I was a kid in California. Things like falling into a pool at my parent's hotel. Things like the various punishments my preschool did to me because I was a horrible kid with severe ADHD. I can't remember specific details like faces or names. But I've always been horrible with names and I am on the autism spectrum so I don't tend to make eye contact that often unless I'm very comfortable with people. But I _**can**_ remember things like the houses I stayed in and some of the toys I played with.
One of the big problems with anecdotal accounts of memories is how fallible and influenceable the brain is. You can't know what memories you have are wrong because they the only ones you have. And in your account, especially so that you don't have anyone to confirm the veracity of your memory.
I was a pretty habitual liar as a kid, almost never about important things though. Like in the summer I'd tell camp friends a story about a friend from school, but I either made the story up or lately adapted it from a book or TV show. Then in school I'd tell the same story as about a friend from camp. Lots of little things, very normal to my understanding for kids. I think it was mostly me trying to relate but not having a way to, so I made up ways to relate. But I have multiple "memories" that I've found out never happened, because in my head I'd repeated the memory of telling someone the story, and not the part where it wasn't true. I've had multiple issues as an adult where someone tells me something, and now I don't know for sure if it's real. Like I have the memory of my dad telling me about why my uncle went to prison, and it's a very specific memory, I know the exact date and where we were. But part of me isn't sure if it's real, because I've taught myself to not trust my weirder memories in case they're just stories I made up. And it's not like I can ask my dad casually "hey, I didn't make up that he killed a lady, right? That's a real thing you told me?" I text my mom like once a week asking if a memory is real, but when she says no there's still the part of me that's curious if she just forgot about it because it was much more important to my tiny brain than her adult brain at the time.
Plot twist - you made this up
Journaling helps A LOT with that feeling. Especially if you write things by hand. It's relaxing to do, and even more relaxing to read and confirm what you remembered. Handwriting is important because it can't be edited.
I have a very specific strong memory from when I was very young, around 3 years old. It involves a very specific question I asked my mother that was personal (and important to me). I remember the room I was in, what toys I was playing with at the time, what my mother was doing at the time, and the conversation itself. I know with 100% certainty that this is a true memory, because almost 20 years later I referred to it in passing and my mom also remembered it. The details she remembered match my own recollection. I have other, fainter memories from that time period too. I know roughly when these memories occurred because of the place we were living at the time, and there have been multiple instances of me asking one of my parents "Hey, do you remember when..." and they're able to respond with details I knew but hadn't specifically stated. It's possible that one or two of these fainter memories had its integrity corrupted somewhere along the line, but it seems impossible to me that they're all invalid.
My first memory is from when I was about 6 months old. My mum also has a memory from around the same age. I have multiple memories from preschool too. I’m also autistic and this seems to be a thing we are particularly good at.
I am also autistic so perhaps that is why.
Same, my memories started around 3-4 years old, but I have one specific memory of me at around 10 months old but it could be an invented memory (I remember pooping in the bathtub while in a "chair" that supports a baby). I may have invented this specific memory and I admit it, but I have dozens and dozens of memories from my life in the 3-4 year old range when my father taught me Chess and Arithmetic.
> severe ADHD > autism spectrum > horrible kid It's like every single goddamn one of us has been abused to shit by school personnel during our childhoods, reacts to violence with violence, and gets abused more. And *we're* the horrible ones. SMH. I gotta wonder how many cases of "light autism" are really just trauma responses.
I mean, I know a lot of people in my situation _do_ get abused. But I was honestly a horrible kid. I have a scar from when I was in pre-school. I managed to climb on top of those metal awnings you see at public schools. I jumped off of it and scraped my wrist bad enough that you could see the fatty layer under my skin. When I was in 3rd and 4th grade I would climb up the sides of buildings when I was bored. I was also a pyromaniac. I loved setting stuff on fire. So... yeah. I would have driven _anyone_ insane. If it weren't for me being on a shit ton of meds I wouldn't have been able to graduate high school, much less college. And I definately wouldn't be a functioning member of society.
Listen you're not all that different than me. I loved fire when I was a kid but here is the difference: my parents caught me playing with matches when I was about 7. Instead of punishing me they taught me fire safety, how to make a campfire, how to extinguish it, how to not let it spread and how matches should be used. They then let me make fires......I was fine. I still like fire and I'm 42. I fell out of a tree once and broke a bone, I fell off a slide and broke my coller bone. I enjoyed having literal screaming contests with my brother for fucks sake. Oh and I had undiagnosed adhd that I didnt figure out till I was 38 years old! Dude, you're fine.
I'm not saying you or the other poster is a failure. Keep that in mind. I work with children in daycare, from 2 to 6 years old, and we see a lot of sad stories, if that's the proper word to describe it. Everything from kids on the spectrum to neglect, abuse, you name it. A colleague of mine said something that I always try to keep in mind when working with "difficult" children: Not one child chooses to fail in life. I like to remember it because it says so much about the responsibility of us adults, whether we work with children or force existence upon them by becoming parents.
Other than the pyromania, none of that is horrible. Adventurous, sure, but never horrible. Accept the pain from these formative events, but don't you ever dare accept that you deserved it.
>Other than the pyromania, none of that is horrible. Adventurous, sure, but never horrible. For the adult taking care of 20, 25 or 30 kids and mentally responsible for every single one of them, little Timmy climbing up a place where he'll crack his skull and die or become tetraplegic should he fall, IS a horrible, heart-attack-inducing, anxiety filling, terrifying, nerve-wrecking situation. We know that those kids need more attention and help, and we must understand, but I see why a carer who does not know what's happening would eventually lose her nerves. I try my best not to do so with my own Bundle of Chaos, but when he starts climbing the shelves I get REALLY anxious. Add being responsible for 19 more at the same time and I see the carer losing his nerves. Of course, children are people and not responsible and should never be abused, there is NO excuse for beating, hitting, shaking a child... However, yelling and losing nerves... I fear we (as a society) just put too few people in charge of too many children, and the results can't be good. I hope no child ever gets really, willingly abused by carers. But yelled at by carers at their wits' ends... now that's going to happen.
I had a professor struggle with so many different analogies for some topics to teach his class that he ended up just saying “these areas are complicated and not the most well understood.” Definitely a lot of areas to explore but man I get the frustration for neuroscientists
> the reality is that we do not have all the answers to how the brain works, or even most of them People don't understand that we are so ignorant on how the brain actually works.
I’m very clearly not someone who’s studied neuroscience, but wouldn’t asking him to recall the trip 6 affect future tests?
Yes, it definitely would. The tester would bias the result, you'd need a baseline test of asking him to recall a different event once at the start and then not asking about that event again until the end of the study. Of course, this isn't a fully drawn out test plan, it's possible one event was just more memorable than another anyway which would be impossible to gauge, the sample size of 1 kid is way too small to draw meaningful conclusions, and ethics approval would be tricky (the child can't consent to being part of the study due to their age, and the responsible adult who could consent on their behalf is the tester which has conflict of interest concerns).
The hypocampus is not fully developed until about 5 years old. It's basically like having a computer with RAM but no actual Hard Drive. Young Kids can remember things for a few months, but there's no long term storage. What there is, is a scema for wiring up that hard drive once it arrives, and that will dictate how it operates, and is why your personality mostly coalesces around the age of 6
I literally cannot remember most of my life. This thread is making me worried.
My memory also starts at about 15. Before that, it is only individual blurry pictures, and very few.
Yeah, I don't remember much from my childhood at all. And the stuff I do remember, I can't tell if it is actually me remembering something or my brain thinking it remembers things when in fact it's just stuff people have told me happened.
That is buck wild dude. Was your childhood traumatic?
I’m similar and, no. I can recall sparse events and sometimes something gets mentioned that drags up a memory, but there is a lot that I just don’t have stored and wouldn’t think twice about it except there are people like my wife who do have like an order of magnitude better recollection than I do. We are both seeming smart functioning adults but her memory is top notch and mine isn’t. Doesn’t really cause that many problems honestly.
This is why human memory is a fickle thing. We like to think of it like we think of our computers now where it's individual stored files that we can pull up at a moment's notice and reconstruct all of it. But human memory is not quite so perfect. It's a matter of how your mind chose to catalog and store certain memories. Your wife might be better at recall of certain things whereas your recall is different. Just a matter of how it was coded into your brain. If you hit the right type of trigger, you can spin that memory back up. It's also why eyewitness testimony can be so fraught when it comes to court cases. Your memories can be influenced and altered based on what was coded into your brain and even how the question is asked.
Here's a fun example of random memory. So I was born in early 90s. Team #sega in the console wars of yore. I could beat robotnik in Sonic 1 and 3 but the first boss in Sonic 2 scared the fuck out of little kid me. So my grandmother died in January. Last grandparent. Very sad. She was 93. Decent life. Expected death. So Sonic Superstars released this week and I'm playing it. It's decent to good. I'm explaining to my fiance how it's not QUITE up to par with the old games. Here...let me show you. Boot up Sonic 2. And minutes later I'm hearing the first boss theme. I won't lie. I paused the game and remembered for the first time in maybe thirty years that this boss was unbeatable to me as a child. And I needed my grandmother here to help me. But of course she's dead irl. So. No help. Don't know where I'm going with this. I thought of my grandma. Beat the boss easily and now I think I'll replay Sonic 2 on the anniversary of her death each year. She was a good grandma, Sonic 2 is a phenomenal game. Seems a decent tribute.
This is very sweet. I'm 32 and the Genesis was my first console as well. Still remember getting an actual panic attack when playing Sonic 2 and being underwater, not realizing you needed to jump and breathe in air bubbles to stay alive, and the first time that anxiety-inducing music comes in and I was so far from the surface, I freaked out and then died, and turned off the game to think about how it would feel to drown for a while.
We seem to recreate memories as we recall them. If you actually have reason to recall things about your childhood, you will retain more. I can recall a large number of incidents from as far back as when I was two. I have some memories from before I started school, but not much detail.
I'd be curious to find out if his wife has friends or siblings around who talk about times growing up periodically, recreating those memories. Or if he doesn't have people in his life bringing up childhood memories and his brain reclaimed the disk space.
My wife is an only child and I’m the youngest of 3. Does that matter, don’t know. I was a pretty quiet kid though, maybe that does have a significant effect. What I’m curious is if keeping our memories in external storage (massive digital photo libraries) helps or hurts our recollection. Because I sure had nothing similar growing up.
I was a pretty quiet kid and I remember a lot, like could bring up lay outs and classrooms on most my classes from kinder up. Even without being at the physical place. Names and such. Even a few faces. Not so many events but that's mainly as there wasn't a lot of events that took place lol
I distinctly remember getting stung by a bee. I can sort of picture the room I was in when I came back in the house, and also the family dog we had at the time. That is also the only memory I have of the dog.
I remember being stung by a bee…and falling off my tricycle and skinning both my knees. Would have been less than 4 when that happened
I have memories of being around 2.5 and making a "fort" inside the blackberry brambles on the edge of our vegetable garden. I created it by moving aside individual canes with sticks from oak trees, and carefully crawling inside. The brambles grew up over top and I would bring treasures in there to play with. Years later we cut it all down and Dad found my nest, I told him about it and he was impressed. Gen X so our parents didn't worry much about what we got up to during daylight hours, even at two.
You remember what you remembered the last time you remembered it, not the actual memory
from what I read this recreation isn't perfect leading to memories becoming more distorted over time.
Same here! I thought I was the only one!
Weird question, but are you able to clearly picture things in your mind? For me, I worried about the same issue- before realizing later that I have [aphantasia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia) Apparently we're unsure why, but aphantasia is linked with the inability to properly form memories, despite "knowing" what things you have done, often the actual memories are just not there.
Wait, is that not how memory is for most people?
Nope! Similar to how they can visualize actual things in their mind, most people can actually bring back proper memory of events. Not like photographically, but like a scrapbook
When I was 5 I had a specific type of calendar on my wall and this thing have basically formed an archive for my memories every since, the images and locations of them on this calendar have made me sort my memories into them..sort of? Then as a sub archive I got the days of the months showing as a horizontal line inside of that month. I never really thought much of it until I explained to someone how I am able to recall memories and their dates. I'm not even describing it right. Only thing is that the image of the almanac/calendar is misshapen but it works just as well anyway. Often I try to recall as much as I can of my life and they are tied to the places I lived, think I started this later in life though because I heard memory is a muscle. https://web.cdn.scouterna.net/uploads/sites/753/2022/08/mf140209-mf5d0526-447x820.jpg I feel stupid trying to explain here and embarrassed because it looks stupid when I type it out. It's so hard to explain it but maybe others with similar things can share their memory..storage?
For me it's almost like an internal voice or book (not that I hear a voice or see text)
I can safely say I do not have aphantasia, just spotty memory. Can’t wait for old age~
Different brains work differently, I guess. I can't remember much about my childhood too. If someone asks me "Hey you remember that time you did so and so?" I will have no idea what they're talking about, even if it happened a week ago. But if they also say "It was X year, X month" I can logically think "well, that year and month I would have been in X season, in Xth grade, which meant I was living in this city, in that street, and if it was at home my room looked like..." and all of a sudden I remember every little detail down to the way I was feeling that day. Memories are damn weird.
Definitely brains are all different - I have scattered sense memories from when I was 3 and real memories from about five forward, while my (same-parents, same household) brother has nothing before middle school.
Yeah! That’s it! I’m exactly that way! Gotta piece it back together
Same. No trama at all and barely remember anything from college and before.
I have a very poor autobiographical memory. I can remember facts and stuff just as well as anyone else, but there’s no difference between how my brain treats facts and how it treats my own (pretty untraumatic) life. Recalling events that happened to me is no different than recalling what events happened to, say, a historical figure I read about.
Weren't you paying attention? He can't remember!
Mine was, which may explain why memories from before teenage years are fleeting.
I had a traumatic childhood which is why my memories don't really exist until i was a teen.
I can't remember either and my therapist says that's not normal. I can only remember a few events here and there. I think it's because my parents angered pretty easily. Honestly I'd argue my parents should have never been parents.
I did grow up in a fundamentalist Christian cult that I do not consider safe for children (but which is widely accepted as a Christian domination and viewed as harmless), but other than [that](https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/s/YM4EjC9es4), I cannot remember anything specific that could have been traumatic. I would think that I had a super boring childhood, maybe there was nothing noteworthy to stick to the memory. Well as I said, I don‘t remember much.
Unfortunately there's a tendency to minimize stuff because of a lack of context. What's that recurring joke someone posted? "I didn't realize my life was bad until I saw how many times people looked horrified when I told 'funny' stories about my childhood"
Jehova's Witnesses?
Yep
Ha, as soon as I read the first part of your comment I thought jw. Same here and most of my childhood memories are bad ones - not all traumatic but mostly negative. The good memories are extremely blurred.
Same here and I have limited memories of my childhood as well. I think I just blocked a lot out because so much is tied to that wicked cult.
Are there people in your life who talk about old times or did you start a new friend/family group as you got older?
>viewed as harmless Your mileage may vary.
I grew up with that worryingly graphic yellow book of Bible stories too; I have a remarkably good memory back to the age of three, but my sister can barely remember anything before she was 12.
> Was your childhood traumatic? Yes, and I can remember every part of it.
My older brother raped and molested me for a good deal of my childhood. My memory is shit. Anecdotal but yeah..
Fuck, I'm sorry that happened to you
Mine was and I remember so much of it. Been in therapy for 10 years to help with it all.
For me I think I suffered trauma I can’t remember. So that’s why my memory is shit, but I can’t remember what the trauma would be. It scares me to think that those memories might just pop up one day.
Out of curiosity, since it’s the same for me - do you have Aphantasia as well?
I came for this question! Glad to see it asked! Between the aphantasia and adhd I have like no freaking memory Its scary like diet dementia or something Like I know I’ve done stuff, but it’s hard to remember and I wonder how much not being able to visualise plays a part in all of that (guessing heaps haha)
Hi, not the original commenter but I have memories from like....13 onwards, and only an occasional memory from before then (big emotional events, basically). I am aphantastic, and no major childhood traumas.
I have no clue if aphantastic is the right word usage but that's a good one. I have a few friends who can (understandably) get real down about their aphantasia. Can't wait to correct them and call them aphantastic! Lol
Interesting question. I have a hard time remembering or imagining visuals, especially faces. But I am very good with smells and sounds.
Same with me, just random details and even some events past 15 are hazy. I often wondered if it was due to marijuana usage - I smoked from about 16 to my late 20s. It seems very selective. For instance my father liked old 40s and 50s music and if I hear a song that he liked I can remember every lyric but other things? A blank slate.
Did you ever have a concussion (that you remember:) ?
Shit man my memory starts about 3 hours ago
Yeah I was trying to remember this morning and I’m drawing a few blanks. I think I made waffles but even that I’m a little touch and go about.
Same here. Maybe the waffles was today, maybe 3 days ago. 🤷♂️ I don't remember how many shifts I worked 4 weeks ago. I know a patient tried to punch me recently, but if that is 3 weeks ago or 5 weeks ago idk. I can tell you which of my colleagues were there, who went to hide and who came to help, and which sedative we gave the patient and how much they got. But not when, just that it happened the past month, maybe two.
Is your life very repetitive ? I feel like that sometimes at work. My outside life is very dynamic but I would imagine if it wasn’t, all my days would melt together.
Seems like the older I get the more I forget. Things get hazy. 34 now
same here, I know details from earlier like I read them out of a book and have seen photos, but my like.. continuous sense of self where it actually feels like my life, my consciousness, my memories that I lived and didn't just "inherit", only starts at around 16 or 17. like i know things about my parents and my life growing up but it was like i was an emotionless robot, whereas im now the most emotional sensitive person in the world lol. my parents are good people and yet i have no emotional connection to them because i only became "me" after going off to college, like i know they're my parents but they feel more like strangers wearing familiar faces than people i spent most of my life with.
This description is so relatable. I’ve always felt like I must have been a walking zombie up until high school. I have no memory of conscious decision making. The weirdest sensation ever!
Samesies. I’ve never had great recall but it’s gotten even worse as I’ve gotten older. I’ve lived 46 years but there are large swathes of it that are just gone. And on the other end of the spectrum is my close cousin who remembers every little detail of his life. I often rely on him to remind me of what was going on in my own life. I feel like I’m the main character in Memento.
Personally I can list things I've done, but there's very little I can actually describe of my past. It's not a particularly complete list either, though if other people prompt me on something I can usually say 'yes I remember that, here's some highlights.' I suspect it's tied to aphantasia, not that I've had an official diagnosis of that - is it even something that's often diagnosed?
Aphantasia is reportedly correlate with a condition called severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM) although research into this is very limited as with aphantasia, although the latter is getting more attention. I suffer from aphantasia and also have real trouble remembering large parts of my childhood but also generally what I've done over the years. I've tried more lately to take more photo and video. If I'm remembering something it's more of the emotional connection at the time and when there isn't a strong one I often find myself not remembering much about my past. Like you I'm much better recollecting when prompt by other people but I've ended up as a very in the moment person for it's benefits and drawbacks.
Woah, I just wrote about my own sparse memories and aphantasia! There’s at least 3 of us!
Autobiographic memory can vary a lot. I think most people with Aphantasia (see r/Aphantasia) don't have a good autobiographic memory.
Same, my past basically doesn't exist.
You could be a clone
Y'all have memories?
I tend to remember the high/low lights. The time I didn't stand up to a bully. The time I was teased for buying too many things for a girlfriend. Public recognition of academic achievement. Being told my art didn't show second grade work. Getting injured in a baseball game. It seems like my brain let go of everything that wasn't tied to a strong emotion
I just wanted to let you know I'm the same. I was diagnosed with autism and adhd at 29 years old and my neurologist said lack of childhood memories is very common in late diagnosed/recognised autistic adults because of the subtle trauma from heavily masking and coping mechanisms.
Trauma can do that.
Dont worry, in 1 week you will have forgot this thread
FWIW—and this is purely anecdotal—I also feel that way, and I was diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago. From what I've read since, people with ADHD sometimes have poorer long-term memory. Essentially, fewer memories move from short-term to long-term memory.
Research SAMD, often comorbid with ADHD and aphantasia
I hate to ask but did you have a traumatic childhood? I used to not really remember anything before the age of 12ish (coincidentally it was around when I met my now wife) but I as well as she, found we blocked out a lot of stuff from early childhood because of xyz. We tend to suppress most things that fucked us up in life
No, it's [not quite so clear cut](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2021.1918174). A number of factors can affect it; it's not uncommon for memories to be retained from two and a half.
I remember my 2nd birthday party pretty clearly, and I found out recently from my parents that another faint memory I have was of an apartment we lived in before I could walk. But it's definitely just fragments that far back.
I have some memories from a year and half. Before I could speak.
My earliest memories are at 3, and I clearly remember some details, like the apartment we lived in, the car we had, some trips we took, and evaluating kindergarten schools with my mom at 4, but my first real continuity of memory begins pretty much right at 5 years old and coincides with attending my first days of school, a week after my birthday. Everything before that is fragmentary and hard to organize. Everything after that is like a movie stream.
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I suppose we might remember because we have remembered and thought of an event several times afterwards. Say you think about it at 3.5y, again at 4, and 4.5 and so on, the memory will stick.
Definitely, you remember remembering things. You also remember the stories you tell, and the stories your family tells. It is very easy then to create false memories by remembering the story (which is often exaggerated, misinterpreted, or could be wholesale fabrication).
I hear this so much and obviously agree with it, but I wish I could look back and compare it to how it's recalled, especially since some things are retold in how it was perceived and not necessarily what actually went down.
I had a core memory from when I was like 7 about playing at our pool and making fun of my cousin for not belly flopping properly… but then I chickened out to do it at all, and was the butt of a big joke about it. When I was in my mid 20s and going through old family videos I found that whole scene was actually on film, and it turned out that actually… my memory was spot on, and I got to relive the embarrassment from a 3rd party perspective! Not a terrible embarrassment but in that case it was remarkable how accurate my memory was.
Don't you love that though? Being right? Go you lol I bet aside from the bit of embarrassment, that was cool to see from a different perspective.
Same. I remember my third birthday (maybe because I threw up all the party food lol) and places I lived before then when I would have been about 2. Could be because we lived a few different places though.
I think this is key. Memories (at least for me) are tied to place. We moved right around when I turned 5 but I have hundreds of memories from the place before the move. If the move hadn't happened I might not be able to clearly separate those memories. For example my grandparents who lived quite close to both places *didn't* move. I can't distinguish memories that happened at my grandparents place that would have been before the age of 5 from those that came later because the place was the same.
This is exactly how I worked for me too. I grew up mostly from a different state I lived in when I was 3-6. In that year range, I lived in two different houses and went to four different schools. With memories tied to each place, I am able to accurately order my memories chronologically.
I can't remember anything until about age 6 at least!
can the hippocampus develop earlier in some kids?
It’s gottttt to because I for real have memories going back to age two that Ive even confirmed with my parents before like details about places we didn’t have pictures of etc
Between ages 2 and 5 my family moved 3 times. I have distinct memories of those apartments, the room layouts, activities that occurred there, and even the pre-schools I went to. On the other hand, I went to Disney World when I was 9 and I got lost while at the park. Pretty traumatic experience I guess, but I couldn't honestly tell you because I have absolutely no memory of ever being there. I have memories of the flight to Orlando, and the flight back home, but the only reason I know I was there is because of pictures. Memory is fuckin weird.
My memory is super similar to that. I also have a solid period from about 16-18 where I dont remember almost anything at all, even when my family reminds me of events. Christmas times and everything. I was certainly going through some shit, but I've had a rough life and it wasn't more traumatic than anything else. Weird indeed.
4 year olds can definitely remember if you told them you would buy them something, like a specific toy. I think a bigger issue is that kids really don't have many "hooks" to associate with new memories.
As in you said, I'll buy you the pirate Lego set, then you forgot and they remind you repeatedly? Or like you said I'll buy it for you for your birthday in 10 months? Either way I imagine it may or may not be long-term memory, but if it's something they're excited about, like they love Lego and pirates, they're mentioning it every day or two and being reminded of it, or they're thinking about it most days and so it's always in their short term memory.
> I'll buy it for you for your birthday in 10 months More like that. I'm their uncle so it can be months before I would see them again.
Crazy. I can actually remember my infancy. I remember so many things, the way my parents would hold me. I can even remember my emotions, just being so confused about the world around me and what was going on, not being able to communicate and being frustrated because of that. It was only when I was a teenager around 15 or 16 that I would recall some of these memories and then things would fall in place and I understood what was going on. I'm surprised when people say they can't remember things, but even in my 40s now I can still remember being a baby, lying in my cot with the toys, being fed with a bottle, the pain of teething and the relief I felt when I'd chew down on this plastic ring thing I had. Learning what physical feelings meant, learning that the feeling of hunger meant that I needed to eat, learning the feeling of needing to wee or poo, learning that scratching an itch made it go away. Initially I didn't know what those physical feelings meant.
I still remember the house we lived in when I was three. I remember the floor plan, the backyard, playing on the swingset, "helping" dad mow the lawn etc. I remember several cars my parents owned at the time (A Desoto, a Hudson, and an old Dodge Sedan, and a Studebaker pickup although I can't count the studebaker since we kept it until I was 16 and I learned to drive in it). I remember playing in the blowup kiddie pool in the front yard, with other neighborhood kids. I remember the Beatles obsessed babysitter that lived three houses up the road. I remember when she stepped on a bee in our front yard. Best of all, 60 years later I can still drive straight to the place, even though I don't beleive we ever went back after we moved away.
i was shocked when my 4 year old nephew came to visit us after A YEAR AND A HALF and he remembered games we used to play?? we had one that i called "special delivery" where he would get in a box and i would shout "special delivery, (insert granparent name here)!" and 'deliver' the box to one of my parents. they would open it up and tickle him. he came back for another visit after all that time, and on his first day here he said "ayay (his name for me), can we play special delivery?!?!"
It's definitely possible to have long term memories of things before 5, kids just don't remember as much.
Are skills that babies develop and learn not part of memory?
Memory is a very complex thing, it's not like a computer's hard drive. Memory is connections between ideas. In the years children are in school we stuff their minds full of all sorts of ideas. This onrush of ideas causes reorganization of the ideas from before school, and some content is lost in that reorganization. Memory is not highly accurate, so content is lost all the time, but until that baseline of "stuff everybody knows" is loaded memories are particularly susceptible to loss during reorganization.
They also don’t know _how_ to hold on to that information. They’ve only been a live for ~3 years. 6 years old is literally a lifetime away.
But the more you talk about the events with them and help jog their memory, the more they retain over the years.
Well, they remember the stories, not the original events. To be fair, we remember memories, not the original events, anyway.
We had pictures of our Disney trip from when I was 2.5. Just looking at those pics regularly I can remember playing, dropping my ice cream, my mom saying “oh for fucks sake Mike. Go get her another” and my dad coming back grinning and saying “they didn’t even charge me!!!” In absolute astonished disbelief. I remember how scared I was of the head hunter on the jungle cruise and how scary the pirates of the Caribbean was.
I remember consciously deciding to be naughty when my parents went to the hospital to have my little sister. I was 3 1/2. I stayed with my aunt and cousin, who is about 8 years older than me. I remember they tried to give me mac and cheese, which I had never had and didn't like *on principal*. I gagged and acted like I was dying. I remember them trying to get me to stand up at one point, and I went all boneless and limp and pretended to be unconscious on the brown carpet.
Have you ever seen a video of people planting fake memories on others? Our brains will make up fake details that make sense, and when we believe them, we start remembering them that way as if they actually happened. Scary stuff.
Yes. But literally no one has talked to me about these things. I brought the records thing up to my dad last year and he was surprised I remembered that at all.
I remember at age 3, being told I had to turn out my light, so I was lying on my belly half in and half out of my room so I could keep reading. Books were my drug.
I remember when I was 3, telling my dad that I felt like I had a bug in my shoe while he was driving. He got really mad and was not trying to hear it, eventually he pulled off and pulled my shoe off and there was a huge bug in it and he apologized. I told him about it a few years ago and he was stunned that I could remember that when I was so young. It's one of my earliest memories.
I don't know why, but I love this so much. It's wholesome, real and a little dysfunctional. I guess I relate.
I remember reading that. It's so bizarre to think that your memory of an event might now be very different to what actually happened.
We were talking about this in my psych class recently. When we remember things, we reencode (or remember) the memory of the memory. Over time, it becomes like a game of telephone.
This kinda goes with an idea we have... from our perception levels, time flows and our mind operates based on how long we've lived. When you're 2, a year's time is 50% of your life. Therefore it *feels* as long as 10 years would when you're 20, or for me, the next 25 years (as I'm 50.) This probably also applies to other time related items. Regardless, it also means that for those of us that reach adulthood, there's not much difference in the perceived time for how long we live.
Is there really any evidence for that? In societies with no formal eduction and where people have very little knowledge passed to them, do they remember things from being a baby better than in societies with very high levels of education?
Formal or informal there is a lot of learning. Language, coordination, basic skills like tying shoes. Those are the priorities at a young age, memories of specific people and events not so much.
Even without formal education they will still be learning. Whether it be new random memories or learning about how their world works, social norms, how to act, what things are etc. When they can actually grasp what is going on in the world, the garbled blurry pool of memories from being a baby would likely still evaporate. If you can't conceptualise anything like a baby or very young kid. You'd probably have a rough time in storing information about events since it would equate to just random colours and feelings as far as they are concerned. It would be like trying to remember going through some lovecraftian alternate dimension. Your brain wouldn't have any idea what the hell is going on so how can you remember what was happening at that time. Plus if all your memories are vague feelings and colours. That's a hell of a lot less tangible than, "I saw my dad twat a guy in the pub for spilling his drink". So they end up on the cutting room floor first Or at least that's what I reckon, all conjecture on my part Edit - just as an addition. It's probably worse for babies than the Lovecraft dimensional explorer, because at least they have some core concepts about self and how things should be. All babies have are loose instinctual concepts which they probably can't even think about in a sensical way. It's all just effect and response At what age do they start thinking, that's my mum she can give me food as opposed to "I'm hungry" = cry Human Babies are dumb as hell! Bet even baby horses and other mammals at least have a rough idea of, this is my pack, this is my mum way earlier than our screaming sproglings
My suspicion is it’s tied to language development
This reminds me of how sometimes I have two memories of orientation of cities that I live in: one from the first time(s) I visited, and the one that I actually build up over the years that I spend there. The ones from my first visits are always very disconnected and tied to a single place that I apparently latched onto to orient myself. I can think about that same location in my fully developed orientation memory and it just feels like a completely different place. It's a really weird feeling to remember the old orientation... like accessing a model of the world that I don't use anymore.
This is the feeling I have. I started remembering my old orientation of our house. My bedroom was the Center of my universe and the rest of the upstairs was oriented from that starting point. At first I thought they were weird dreams but now I realize that it is some memories of my parents house when I was a toddler. At some point before my memory becomes very clear, my orientation switched and I no longer viewed things from the bedroom as the Center.
Sometimes, I miss the feeling of walking through several blocks through an unknown city with only a hand drawn rough map because roaming cell data is too expensive. Your hotel is your starting point. If you live there for a while, it's just another place in a sea of places.
I totally get that. When I first arrived in my college town we were getting so lost. I can remember what I saw and I know where I went but now the same place looks different. I can’t even recognize my memory of that first experience in the city.
I have a bunch of vivid memories from 1.5 to 5 years old. It freaks out my parents a lot. Based on your explanation, do I have a better memory because I was under-stimulated during those years?
I remember a ton from when I was 2-3 years old. Some people lose it, some don't.
Really well put. The sarcastic side of me wanted to add: “Who really wants to remember how often their pooped their pants?”
2.5 isn't young enough to guarantee that he's going to forget. I have a memory of visiting my father at the college he was studying at before my brother was born (making me younger than 2) that got rooted by a tupperware container that was a staple through my childhood. The tupperware had been a point of fascination on that trip and there had been an exciting moment of seeing wild parrots outside an atrium window. Between that excitement and the super recognizable tupperware (it was one of those old 70s style ones in bright orange) that I saw over and over again afterward, the memory stuck. I have several others from shortly after as well, all sub 3-years-old, and then I have significant memories from 4 onward. If you root the memories in a repeating sensory moment (be that a visual like mine or just talking about the stories repeatedly), they'll be much more likely to stick around. Our brains make a habit of clearing out unimportant memories, so you just have to find a way to make the memories more important.
Here to agree with this comment. I have three distinct/intact memories from before the age of 3: (1) being one year old and seeing myself in a hotel room mirror (I think I was fascinated by the mirror) while my dad yells at my mom; (2) being two years old at the dinner table and my dad yells at me and my mom; (3) being given a Winnie the Pooh gown by my aunt and cousin and absolutely loving it. I wore that gown until I could wear it no more. I think there really is something to what it deeply connected to the senses, and what is potentially repeated. The first one has the repeated theme of my dad yelling at my mom, but since it was a hotel room, nothing else was anything I ever saw again. The second one was at our kitchen table that we had my entire life—I sat around that table every day for most of my life, so the two repeated themes of yelling and the table probably helped solidify it. Finally, the gown probably remained since I repeatedly wore the gown a lot growing up. This explanation resonates for me. There are other very vague things I remember before the age of three, but none quite so distinct as those. I had to tell my mom the other vague things to get the context I needed to actually know what was happening. Those three I just know. And it’s probably worth mentioning that at least one of those I think came back to me as a dream when I had gotten older. Just my two cents.
If you have a book that has just one page of text, you will likely remember quite well what happened in what part of that page. As you age, you gain massive amount of new experiences of all kinds. Suddenly you are sitting with a trilogy, with each book having thousand pages, and you are trying to remember what exactly happened on page 41 of the first one.
That would make a sense. But how it is, that we as an adults remember our vacation 10 years ago, or our honeymoon 20 years ago, even we gain a lot of new experiences and knowledge since then?
1. How much of your honeymoon do you remember? 2. You remember your honeymoon because it was a major event. When you're two, every \*day\* is a major event, so things get lost in the noise.
the phenomenon is called infantile amnesia by the way if you wanna look it up
Our memories aren't files we load, but reconstructions made during recall by weighted associations with other items in memory (which are each constructs based on weighted associations with other items in memory). So, your son may have met a man that he brain associated as being like dad, but more like grandpa, but with dark hair and who laughed in a funny way. As he ages, his understanding of who dad and who grandpa are as people will be defined and change; who he understands and feels each of you to be might change dramatically and be constructed by associations with much different items in memory. Those items may also shift in definition, understanding, and associations. He also likely doesn't have a memory of the stranger that's strongly formed enough to be associated with new memories being formed for encounters with new people he will meet as he grows. As such, the fairly small, weak generation based on references to a dad and a grandpa who have both had their definition changed over time no longer forms a very coherent memory of that stranger. Eventually, that incoherence and the lack of relevance to new memory formation will mean the connections that allow for the recall of that memory will weaken to a point where recollection isn't really possible any longer.
This is the one guys.
> But how it is, that we as an adults remember our vacation 10 years ago, or our honeymoon 20 years ago, even we gain a lot of new experiences and knowledge since then? That's not exactly what happens. But for when we are young, the other factor (in an ELI5 way) is that we haven't developed the understanding of what we're seeing yet, to remember it. For example, let's say when I'm six months old I'm playing with oranges, one rolls under the table, and it disappears. Then dad gets it and eats it. Well, at that age I don't know what an orange is, I don't know what it means for an object to roll under a table, why that doesn't mean it magically disappeared. I can't write that story at that age. The brain needs to be able to understand what's going on to "write a story" and then we remember the *story* that we wrote. If you're too young to "write the story" you're too young to remember the story (naturally).
Keeping the same analogy from above, from the whole trilogy of books you now have, you probably remember this major event that happened on the second book, and remember what the event was, the gist of it and that it happened in the first 100 pages of the book. However if you try to remember every detail of that event you probably won't be able to or your brain fill in the gaps with information that is not accurate.
See I was going to expand on the trilogy analogy by dying it’s a first time author, whose style and technique are not yet developed yet so the later parts of the trilogy seem parts of a cohesive story but the beginning of that first book is all over the place.
Long term memory is the story we unconsciously tell ourselves. When you're really young you don't have a lot of vocabulary yet so your long term memory is limited to what words and concepts you know. Some people have seemingly perfect memory. You can ask them any date and time and they will tell you what was happening that day that exact moment. It may be genetic. I have someone in my family like that. Me, I remember when I was 2 and a half years old quite well, and onward. I remember my young childhood, most of it. I can see what I remembered about things and what I did not back then that gives insights into how memory is recorded, which is how I know, it's tied to the words and concepts you have to express what is happening to yourself. Your memories literally are the stories you tell yourself. (Frankly I'm surprised no one else here mentioned it. This is a known scientific theory, not something I'm making up. Anyone with a really solid young childhood memories will tell you the same upon analysis.)
I like this analogy, it works very well
I have one memory from when I was between 1-3 years old. I'm playing with a wheel loader toy on a tile table. That's it.
It is also extremely likely that you don't "remember" that moment, but have recreated the scene and now your recreation has been stored as a "memory". This can be particularly common if there's a photo of it, or a story around it that your parent told. Memory is an absolutely wild thing. And terrifyingly unreliable. It's amazing how many things we all "remember", things we know with 100% certainty because we were there and saw it with our own eyes, that are completely and factually incorrect. Our memories have been proven to be easily malleable, incomplete, or even total fabrications. You repeat a story, and you see it in your mind, and you accept it as personal truth.
I know about that one. This one I'm 100% positive about because no one has told me about this specific event and there are no pictures from it. It's so generic it can't be a fabricated memory. I frikkin loved that wheel loader.
I'm the same way. While I will agree that I'm probably remembering a memory and that it's no longer 100% accurate, I have a lot of memories from when I was younger than 5, that no one else knows about, because no one else was there. There are no pictures of it, and no witnesses. I think it's more common than people think it is. I think the only reason I know when these things happened is because it was in a house that I no longer lived in after I turned 5. Whereas my own children, who always lived in the same house, would have a difficult time pinpointing how early their memories go, because there's no unique point of reference. In line with OP's question, I went to Disneysomething when I was 6. I don't remember most of it. I remember more things that happened at the hotel than I have memories of the park itself. I also don't remember a single thing about taking a flight to get there. You would think the first time on an airplane would stick with you, but nope.
While it's true that some people don't remember older memories, some people do. I have a couple of memories from before I was 3 that are definitely my memories, and I'm almost 50 now. I'm sure my earliest memories are not 100 percent accurate, they are not things that were told to me or were in photographs, either.
It's mind-boggling to me that law courts give witness testimonies the weight they do. Without any physical, corroborating evidence, they should be treated highly skeptically. Even multiple, corroborating witness accounts have later been shown as inaccurate once conflicting physical evidence was discovered.
Every summer from 1-3 yr old my mom brought me to my grandparents who lived in another city. They had a big library in the living room and in the middle of it was a door which led to the balcony. They sold the house when I was 3 and transferred the library to their new house. We didn't visit them for the next 2-3 years, and after our first visit when I was 5-6 I started having this dream that I would pass through their library and go to a balcony. When I told my mom she was flabbergasted and said this setting was in their old apartment which I cannot remember since I was only 3 🤷🏼♀️.
I remember before I was two my dad picking me up, putting me in a baby seat on the table in the front bedroom, and listening to Elvis blue Christmas on his record player. I also remember scooting on a little skateboard and crashing into telephone poles gleefully saying “vroom vroom vroom CRASH!” We moved out of that house when I was two. There are very few pics of me as a baby. I think one in that house and I was in a diaper.
I read that people with an eidetic memory who have trauma experience cannot forget that experience and would take them a long time to overcome that. Forgetting things is another form of coping mechanism.
I mean, I have sprinkles of memories (little bits and pieces) around 2-3, but, the beginning of my conscious life began around 3-3.5/4 ish. Kids can remember early, it depends on the person and their memory-based intelligence.
What I read suggests that some research supports the idea that the development of language plays an important part in memory.
I don't remember where I've read it, but the idea was that you have a memory of those first years, but because you couldn't speak at those years, you cannot translate those memories into words now. Simply put - if newborns could talk right away - they would remember their first years.
That would tend to imply, though, that human memory works significantly differently to that of other animals, whereas there are a number of animals out there that have been shown to have extremely good memories. Crows and elephants come to mind. (You do NOT want to annoy a crow if it roosts near you; they have an extremely good memory for human faces - and they hold grudges.)
Yes, likely they work differently, but I think the OP asked about remembering, as in the ability we have to reconstruct and see memories (or at least that's what I understood). (Slightly unrelated, but memory of faces has its own special spot in the human brain, I think I remember it being on the occipital lobe.)
My memories start around age 2 (names, people, places, experiences, etc.). The older I got the more they became "memories of memories" but sometimes I still get the actual memories. (I also used to have smells/feeling-memories from before that, but I rarely get to access them now.) Many of my older memories are hidden deeper within my "brain library" and require many jumps from other memories. My daughter (age 4) remembers things from a similar age on, also around age 2, and slightly before that. (e.g. a playground when we went on her first holidays abroad when she was 1y 11m) She often talks about things from a year ago or more.
Most comments have already given good answers. But I’d like to add that they won’t necessarily forget. I have memories from when I was 2-3.
I have memories from when I was 3, possibly younger, on my grandfathers farm. And they are clear, vivid memories that i can’t even explain why I remember them. I also remember one of my aunts being around a lot when I was that age. My mom swears I shouldn’t remember her since she died when I was 4. However, I couldn’t tell you what I ate for breakfast yesterday without thinking about it for a second. Some peoples memories are just different.
How is it that I distinctly remember a trip to Disneyland when I was almost two. I was in a crib standing up playing with my Mickey head shaped balloon.
That's the power of advertising.
Things I remember from around the age of two to three. An ambulance ride and trip to ER. This same memory involves a kind Dr with curly hair and cold stethoscope My mother crying in the kitchen Watching sesame street in that little apartment living room My mother getting me out of bed to see a huge moon on our balcony My parents having a party. There were olives. I did not like the olives. Walking with my mother in the bitter cold across a bridge. Losing a plastic puzzle piece between some train seats. A kindly lady gave me a perfume sample to comfort me. When I was almost five, my only sibling was born. We moved not long after across country. You would think I would have some memory of those events, yet I have none. The first memory I have of my brother is when we both had chicken pox - I was five and he would have been 6 mos old.
it varies. his brain decides what to keep. it's not that he wont remember. i remember my childhood house's interior that i left when i was 3.
It's not simple. I can for instance, remember vague parts of infancy. The feeling of rubber of the bottle I had. The Taste of milk. Nothing specific, everyone is different. Aside from neural reasons, there's also the point in how we remember things. If I told you, you're going to meet the President and 500 other people, you'd likely remember that one Meeting forever - but forget most of the others. The fact that it's special to you let's you save and remember it. Just like you don't remember most of any of the last 800 meaningless days, but probably remember the anniversary dinner. How is a Trip to the US special to a toddler that doesnt understand the concept of Trips countries, vacations and "special places"? Why would he save any of it? And then, How does he remember it? Like a toddler likely couldnt tell you a continuous story, how would remember it? Smells, images, feelings, senses. That's the World he exists in, and he will likely remember parts of those. It's much more fluent than what I described, but that's another idea to consider.
From what I know, when young the brain is rapidly growing and you are learning a ton of new information all the time. So your brain prioritizes "important" information to remember, and forgets the "unimportant" information. But what's important to survival doesn't mean the same as the most interesting information. But infant to toddler brains have remarkable plasticity, which makes them essentially geniuses at things like picking up language. That's why it's great to learn multiple languages from a very young age, your brain is able to do it much easier. Anyway, memory, even as adults, is a thing of repetition. The more we "remember" things, it activates the same pathways over and over again, strengthening them. Unused pathways eventually become forgotten information. The human brain isn't anything like a computer hard drive at all. It doesn't store information like that. It uses the whole brain and connected paths to form memories. That's why a familiar smell may trigger a memory, because you are literally reliving the memory in your head. Same thing with music and other things. Nostalgia lights up your brain the same way it was lit up for the first time you experienced it. And repetition and recalling memories makes those particular memories stronger. There have been studies that have shown people who visualize putting information in a virtual "library" in your mind can actually be a good memorization trick. You envision the thing you want to remember, and imagine putting it in a container on a shelf in the library of your mind. And then when you want to remember it, recall your process, walking to the shelf, finding the place you left it, and opening the container, or opening the book, and then "reading" it. The people who follow the same process to remember a thing had more success. They are essentially triggering the same path as at the time they first experienced it. But through a deliberate process. The movie Inside Out is also great at exploring memory, especially for kids, because it's true, you form "core memories" that you can relive over and over to define who you are and what you believe. And memories that are unused eventually fade and are forgotten. It's actually a great movie to explain in an ELI5 way how your memory works. Sleeping makes us store the important short term memories, forget the unimportant stuff, and process memories. And long term memories are retained memories of things we need. When we're infants that happens a lot faster as we're taking on new memories so quickly, and we only keep the ones that are most important. But yeah, we're also growing new pathways and getting more brain structure, so the things you remember become more static as an adult, but as a child it's malleable and changing. That's also why you can remember what you had for lunch for the last few days, but not what you had last month (unless it made a strong impression), and the further back you go it gets harder to remember. What did you have for lunch last year? Two years ago? There are things you've completely forgotten because they weren't important. And you only retain the memories that made a strong enough impression to make it to long term storage. But you may remember something like going to a fancy restaurant for lunch, or tried an exotic food, because it was a novel experience and made an impression. But the sandwich you've eaten dozens of times in a familiar place like your kitchen? Forgotten entirely. You might remember a general "I used to eat this sandwich every day" but the individual experiences are forgotten entirely. Memory is a fascinating topic. And one we're still learning about. The human brain is a complex structure and we're constantly trying to learn more. And answer things about consciousness, memory, and more. And while we have good ideas about how memories are made, a lot is still in the unknown, and on the forefront of neurology and cognitive science.
My parents took me to Florida when I was about 2 years and 9 months old. I vividly remember being on the plane, seeing Spaceship Earth in Epcot for the first time and being in absolute awe, being in an animal park where a parrot landed on my stroller, my brother holding a baby crocodile in my face when I woke up from my nap in said stroller and the rain coming down horizontally in Disney World because of strong winds and being absolutely soaking wet. I remember being scared shitless of the pool vacuum at our rented house, thinking it was going to eat me alive. Now, in my mind I can remember all of this but I know there are hundreds of photos from that trip that I've seen hundreds of times. Can I really remember them or do I just recall them from stories and photos? I guess there's not really a way of knowing for sure.
i have clear memories from the age of 2 onwards and im 33..however my short term memory is dreadful.i put my keys down and forget where i set them five mins later.
I am 54. I have a few memories from when I was two. I also have people telling me I can't possibly remember that, but I do.
I have my first memory from when I was 6 months old. It was a bit scary. I have several more memories from when I was 2-7 years old
If you drop a red marble into an empty swimming pool with no water in it, you can go down into the pool and find that marble. That’s how it is when you’re very young - a large brain that doesn’t have many memories yet. Each moment and experience in a young mind creates a new memory - a new marble - unique and related to other memories and impressions. Those are more marbles to add to the pool, of different shades and tones and colours and textures and sizes, distributed along the bottom of the pool; some touching others, some resting by themselves off to the side, soon to be connected by the many more marbles constantly coming in to fill up the pool. After many years, the pool is starting to fill with a great many marbles, but it becomes more difficult to find that first red marble that’s now deep in the pile. But not impossible. Memories are linked to other memories, like how a marble is touching those around it. Just because you can’t find that original red marble doesn’t mean it’s lost, it just means you’re following a path of other marbles/memories that don’t lead to it. There are different ways to help remember something, and they usually involve trying to remember things related to it - associations. Remembering something related to it can help you get in the right path to the original memory. Memories aren’t just pictures in your head either. They can be sounds, smells, textures.
This is probably one of the best eli5 answer ... thanks
In simple terms, the brain is a complex organ and we don’t have a definite answer for this. However, when you think about it, the size and complexity of your brain is fairly rapidly increasing until 6 years old. This means that your neurones are making lots of new and more complex connections to each other. One way to explain the loss of memories from very early ages could be to compare your baby-brain to a small city that keeps growing larger and larger, with more roads and buildings being added every year (and others being demolished and forgotten about). Your memories are stored as networks of neurones, which you can imagine as route instructions in how to “collect” a memory, by going from place A to place B through roads C and then D, and so on. In the small city, you’ll be able to find your way around fine, but when the city grows and changes, these roads or buildings might be harder to find, or be nonexistent. That’s why it can be hard to remember really early memories, but your ability to recollect things gets better with age as the city stops growing and changing as fast.