Do you know why we don't remember the first years of our lives

Can you tell what you were doing, say, five years ago? Probably yes. But do you remember your life when you were one and a half or two years old? This is already an impossible task.

Psychologist Carolyn Rovey-Collier hosted the series researchto check how young children are doing with memory. And experimentally, she discovered that babies can form memories from a very young age. For example, they able keep in mind the faces of familiar people - especially mothers - and smile them.

In addition, Rovy-Collier establishedhow long babies can retain information. Six-month-olds were taught to pull a lever for a minute to speed up a toy car. And the next day they remembered how it works, but later they threw the information out of their heads. However, the older the children got, the longer they kept the information.

So, if people are able to form memories from the very first months of our lives, why do we not remember ourselves as babies? In fact, it is still a mystery to scientists. This feature of the human brain

called "infantile amnesia". And there are several hypotheses, what is its cause.

1. The self-perception hypothesis. In order to form autobiographical memories, you must have a sense self-awarenessclearly separating oneself from others. Researchers identifiedthat babies under 18 months have problems with this: if they smear paint on their nose and then let them look in the mirror, they will not understand who is in the reflection. Children from 18 to 24 months old try to erase the paint.

By this age, they already have self-awareness and even some self-esteem. And that means that memories of yourself can form.

2. The language hypothesis. If you try to remember something, then most likely you will restore the events in your head with the help of words. That is, to build an internal monologue. And young children with self-talk scrolling in their brains have big problems: they still don't know the language is so good speak. And later they lose their preverbal memories, because they could not reinforce them in time with inner speech.

3. The hippocampus hypothesis. Pretty simple theory: young children cannot remember the early period of their life simply because their hippocampus is an area of the brain, involved in the transfer of information from short-term memory to long-term memory, is not yet completely developed. When it is sufficiently pumped (usually by 18-24 months), children will be able to form lasting memories.

4. Protection hypothesis. Another option: infantile amnesia allows you to protect a young, growing body from associated infancy unpleasant memories that can negatively affect the development of the psyche.

The fact is that children are very fragile creatures and unable to protect themselves. They are vulnerable to disease and can be easily harmed by adults - even their own parents. After all, not so long ago, by evolutionary standards, infanticide was considered a completely normal way to control births.

In general, infancy is the time when a person is most helpless and in no way able to influence his fate. And some scientists considerthat if we kept replaying our difficult life in our heads at that time, then would go crazy.

And wise mother nature put the appropriate fuses in the brain so that we do not remember too much often about their vulnerability and did not think with horror: “I almost choked on my nipple then... How did I survive this nightmare?!"