Why Don’t We Remember Specific Events from Our First Years of Life?

Why Don’t We Remember Specific Events from Our First Years of Life?

Challenging assumptions about infant memory, a new Yale University-led study shows that infants as young as 12 months old can encode memories. The findings suggest that infantile amnesia — the inability to remember our first few years of life — is more likely caused by memory retrieval failures rather than an inability to form memories in the first place.

Yates et al. investigated the mechanistic basis of this infantile amnesia by scanning the brains of awake infants with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they performed a subsequent memory task. Image credit: Kang Heungbo.

Support authors and subscribe to content

This is premium stuff. Subscribe to read the entire article.

Subscribe

Gain access to all our Premium contents.
More than 100+ articles.

Buy Article

Unlock this article and gain permanent access to read it.
Exit mobile version