Some of us can remember just a few events of theirs childhoodothers instead do not remember anything. Still others remember things that never happened. memory linked to the events of our childhood is like a dark room where, at times, it seems to glimpse something that is not clear whether it is reality, the fruit of our imagination, or a construction a posteriori based on the story of our parents or relatives. We tend not to remember our early years of life because theimmaturity of the structures of our brain linked to memory makes it difficult to transform events experienced in the early years of life into explicit memories in the long term and, without the ability to speak, build a logical and temporal structure that helps us organize memories is very difficult.
Brain development in the early years of life
The brain, during the first years of life, has an explosive development, and its neural connections are very dynamic. If we were to look at the crucial memory regions in the brain of a young child we would notice that thehippocampusa seahorse-shaped structure that is located under the bark and which is responsible for the fertilization phase consolidation of memoriesdoes not present itself with the same level of development of an adult brain. The hippocampus, like most of the infant’s neurons, forms connections at an impressive speed, but at the same time the solidity of those connections is unstableand subject to an equally dynamic process of “pruning”, or rather, the breaking of connections. The result is a general difficulty in completing the entire complicated process that goes from experiencing an event to transferring it into the long term memory.
In addition to the hippocampus, the prefrontal cortex is experiencing a moment of great plasticity. This area, crucial in the processes of reasoning, planning And decision makingis also involved in the memory recovery. So, on the one hand there is a difficulty in transforming short-term memory into long-term memory, due to the extreme plasticity of the hippocampus, on the other hand it is difficult to have stability of memories and their linear recovery due to the same complexity that afflicts the prefrontal cortex.
Digging deeper, we discover that not all of the sub-areas of the areas we have named have the same degree of development, and consequently some mnemonic abilities develop early, especially if we talk about implicit memory (which is the memory we use to walk or to use cutlery) or pre-explicit (that of being able to recognize faces and objects). For the latter, for example, it seems to be particularly important subiculuma substructure of the hippocampus already relatively mature at birth.
The fundamental role of language
The arrival of the language skills It is a major watershed for our ability to train and recover autobiographical memoriesthat is, those linked to our personal experience. Verbalization, in fact, requires a narrative structure, a development in time, a clear definition of the subjects and objects of the sentences. In other words, it requires a logical structure which helps our brain to form in memory the story of our life. It is no coincidence that the memories of life before language they are memories disorganizeddetached from the timeline and, for this very reason, of difficult recovery.
The language is so, in a certain sense, the train that carries memories that organizes them, lines them up, and makes them more accessible. For this reason, many of our memories begin to form around three or four years of age, when our speaking becomes more skilled and structured.
The Influence of Culture on Childhood Amnesia
If, as we have seen, language plays a central role, we might think that even the culture in a broader sense both decisive. In fact, cross-cultural research has shown that there are significant differences between cultures Western and Eastern Europeans in their ability to remember their early years. In particular, children raised in contexts Westernwhere personal narration is strongly valued, tend to recall events from their childhood earlier compared to children raised in cultures orientalwhere memories are often less focused on the individual and more general.
In these societies, educational practices and interactions with parents play a fundamental role: in Western familiesa is encouraged more detailed and personal narrative of events, while in those oriental we tend to tell less about individual memories and more about collective or social. Consequently, children raised in Western environments develop a greater ability to remember their early lives in greater detail and with a greater emphasis on personal emotions.
These kinds of cultural differences suggest that language and storytelling not only help to Organize memoriesbut also contribute to how these are stored and later recovered.
