Why do most people not remember anything before the age of 3?

Friends

Try to recall

Do you remember what happened when you were two years old?

Or what age is your earliest memory?

No matter how good a person's memory is, at best he can only remember things from kindergarten, and before that it's a blank. What's going on? Is it that when we were two or three years old, our memory was bad and we couldn't remember things?

In fact, most people will lose their memories from infancy. As for how long the infancy period is, it varies from person to person. Some people lose their memories from 3 years old, and some people even lose their memories from 8 years old, so that everything before the age of 8 is forgotten.

Today we will study:

Why do we "lose" our childhood memories?

What factors can lead to poor memory?

How to improve memory?

Childhood amnesia

As early as the 19th century, psychologist Freud coined the term "childhood amnesia" when he discovered in clinical practice that many people lacked the ability to recall events from their early years.

Some people think that children have no memory before the age of three, but this is wrong. Many babies will have different behavioral responses to their parents and strangers at three months or earlier, and memory is involved in this process. Our memories are generated very early in infancy, and some babies can even remember what happened within 24 hours.

Therefore, the so-called memory loss in infancy does not mean that infants have no ability to remember, but that after adulthood, they cannot retrieve childhood memories from their brains or that childhood memories are not stored .

There are many theories about the causes of memory loss in infancy. The following two theories are more famous:

1. Lack of language ability in infancy

Thomas Inser of the National Institute of Mental Health believes that the reason why humans lack memories of their infancy is probably related to the psychological activities of humans in infancy and the degree of their mastery of language.

The area in the human brain that controls language learning is called the Broca's area, which is also the language center of humans. The age of 4 to 12 is the sensitive period of this area, so 4 to 12 years old is the critical period for humans to learn language. Compared with 4 to 12 years old, the language learning ability of infants before the age of 3 is very weak, which is consistent with the period of time when we lose memory.

Research by cognitive psychologists at the University of Minnesota also shows that the human brain does not store any form of retrievable early memories, mainly because humans do not yet have language skills during infancy. Early memories are likely to be recorded in non-verbal form, so humans cannot use language to express their early memories .

According to information from modern cognitive psychology, infants cannot use language as a tool for mental representation when processing information, that is, they cannot input the sound code, shape code, and meaning code of speech into long-term memory. Long-term memory does not store language information, so it is impossible to use language to retrieve memory to answer various problems encountered in adulthood.

2. Development of the hippocampus

From a biological perspective, the hippocampus plays a key role in the conversion of short-term memory into long-term memory.

The main storage site for memory in the brain is the hippocampus. Physiologists say that although the fetal cerebral cortex and hippocampus are basically formed at 6 to 7 months of gestation, the brain will continue to develop after birth.

After the baby is born, many synapses and myelin sheaths are formed in the cerebral cortex, and many new neurons are formed in the hippocampus. It is like your brain is undergoing a "major renovation" during infancy, and many new bridges are built to ensure that when more stable neural activities (including memory) occur, the various parts of the body communicate and exchange efficiently and orderly.

But at the same time, the new neurons in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus will change the old neural network used to store memory . The "collapse of the transmission bridge" of early memory will cause early memory loss.

Simply put: the brain grows so quickly during infancy that it quickly erases memories.

Factors that cause poor memory

Memory and age are related. The research result recognized by the academic community is "Models of Visuospatial and Verbal Memory Across The Adult Life Span" published by Denise C. Park in 2001. He found in 345 adults aged 20-90:

People begin to experience irreversible memory decline from their mid-twenties , whether it is working memory, long-term memory, short-term memory or the speed of information processing.

So in general, people's memory reaches its peak in their early 20s.

In addition to age, there are many other factors that lead to poor memory, such as negative emotions, insomnia, illness, overuse of the brain, over-reliance on tools for memory, excessive stress, and bad habits such as smoking and drinking .

If the memory loss is transient (a clinical symptom or sign appears once in a short period of time), it is usually caused by alcoholism, smoking, excessive stress or lack of rest. You can try to relax yourself, exercise, go on an outing, get more sleep, and let your nervous system get enough rest, and you will recover.

If it is a long-term memory loss, you should be alert and learn to change your lifestyle, such as not staying up late, quitting drinking, etc. If necessary, go to the hospital for treatment to prevent brain disease.

How to Improve Memory

1. Get enough sleep

When people are tired, they are more likely to forget. Ensuring adequate sleep at night and a good balance of work and rest during the day is the basis for maintaining memory.

2. Exercise appropriately

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, a new study on walking, dancing and brain health shows that exercise can strengthen and repair our white matter . The study shows that when people become more physically active, the white matter that connects and supports our brain cells repairs itself.

Agnieszka Burzynska, a professor of neurology and human development at Colorado State University, said that no matter how old we are, the white matter of the brain remains plastic and active, and brisk walking a few times a week may be enough to rejuvenate the tissue and delay or prevent memory decline.

3. Manual Recording

“A good memory is worse than a bad pen.” If your memory is not very good, you can make a table to divide the day into multiple time periods.

For example, if there are 12 hours in a day, divide it into 12 segments, then record what you did in each time segment, and finally think back on how you spent the day. This can not only exercise your brain memory, but also help us allocate time reasonably and record our lives.

4. Take the initiative to say hello and chat

When you take the initiative to say hello, you need to remember the other person's name and appearance, which helps improve brain power. In addition, studies have shown that chatting with others for more than 10 minutes a day can exercise the brain and is very beneficial for improving memory.

5. Eat more green foods

Green foods, mainly leafy vegetables, can help fight cognitive impairment and reduce the risk of memory loss. In addition, a study by Columbia University in the United States found that fish, nuts and olive oil have the same effect.