What's Your Earliest Memory? 996
spazoid12 writes "I've been curious lately about memory. For example, why is it that my earliest memory is from about 7 years of age? (I'm mid-30's now) Most people I know remember much further back. How far back can a person remember? Is there a theoretical limit? What are the requirements for acquiring memories? I've read that oxygen is one; as in actual breathed-in stuff. This is supposed to explain why you can't remember anything from within the womb. That seems silly to me. My own theory (with nothing to back it up) is that language is required. We spoke mostly Brasilian Portuguese and some Russian in the home up until I was about 5 or 6. We moved to Brasil for a year when I was 8 and I barely remember anything from that trip. I really don't know either language today-- could this explain why I have no memories of those years? What if I re-learned those languages now, 30 years later? Would memories flood back?"
Memory needs prompts (Score:3, Insightful)
If you try to just restore memories you are more than likely making them up (not that you realise you are making them up).
I would say it's unlikely that anybody remembers anything from around age 3 - they may think they do but it's more likely the memories have been implanted (nothing conspiritorious, just a purely natural thing for memories to be "implanted" unintentionally). Reason is simply that a childs brain takes a good long while to develop - long term storage isn't high on the agenda.
Most people don't remember half of what they claim (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost everyone I know has what strike me as overly clear memories from when they were extremely young.. 2, 3 years of age. Often, I've found that when you talk to their parents or other older relatives, the story you get from them is almost word-for-word what the child 'remembers'. My guess is these are things that the child has heard many, many times in his/her life, and eventually forms a 'memory' around it. Sort of how some people hear a story about something happening and incorporate that into their stock of things they believe happened to them.
What we hear from others influences our own memories highly, it's amazing how many people can recall group events years later, even if some of them weren't actually present for something that occurred. Also, a child's sense of time is really out of whack - remember how long summer seemed to be? Things that happen when you're 5 or 6 can seem to have happened when you were much younger.
Memory is a very tricky, changing thing, even for recent events in fully cognizent adults. I don't find it surprising at all that childhood memories aren't terribly reliable nor consistent.
Uh, last Tuesday? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ray Bradbury..... (Score:2, Insightful)
For me, that would be a very disturbing experience.
-- anthony
Re:I remember my circumcision... (Score:4, Insightful)
While you may remember down to age 2, its pretty hard to order things chronologically until much late r in life.
While some people may (or certainly say they can) remember down to childbirth, the fact that so many jewish men don't remember circumcision says to me that most people don't remember things at birth, even if painful or traumatic - remembering that circumcision has been going alot longer than anaesthesia.
In truth, the brain really isn't that functional at that age. Doesn't mean that it isn't working, just that its not functioning as a cohesive organ.
Also, as an aside voluntary recall of past events probably requires some verbal skills to associate with those events. Memories from ages before people can speak meaningfully (ie, age less than two) are going to be hard to spontaneously recall - "I'm thinking back to living in my first house" - because to initiate this sort of recollection is a verbal/logic driven action. If you have a memory going back before you could speak much won't have any words associated with it. You might recall them by association with non verbal events, however.
Michael
Re:Physc (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Physc (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I remember my circumcision... (Score:3, Insightful)
About memory (Score:2, Insightful)
One thing that is for certain is that memory is linked to emtions. The stronger the emotion, the clearer the memory. Perhaps your childhood was just very uneventful?
About this 2 year limit some people mentioned, it's not that simple. You start to learn language from the day you are born (if not before), something you certainly store indefinitely. In fact, everything you remember longer than about 20 seconds (IIRC) takes a trip through long term memory.
However, long term memory is in no way permanent. For something to be stored permanently, it will have to be reiterated over and over, through manual repetition (what you do in school), being put in similar situations over again, or simply through the memory being linked to strong enough emotions that it bubbles up by itself once in a while. It's the long term memory that needs to get reiterated. Just repeating something over and over is not that good, as you just keep it in your working memory. If you want to learn words or whatever, make sure you have more than 10 items, that way you won't be able to keep it all in your working memory, unless you group 2 or more into a single item.
It takes about 3 years for a memory to become really permanent. Everything you remember from further back you will always remember, disregarding diseases/brain damage. For fresher things, you'll need to access the memory once in a while. Something you should think about if you spent a lot of time 1-2 years ago trying to learn a new language or similar.
Disclaimer: this was all taken from memory.
Re:Me too. (Score:5, Insightful)
(Not that I'm saying it's this bad, but) this isn't too far off from people who are SURE they can remember being abducted by aliens... deja vu also seems VERY real to people. Also, things like early family photos, etc. that you have seen many times over the years can make you feel like you actually *remember* when it was taken.
I'm sure it seems real, but your claim that you knew someone's name from before you were born (let's not get into the development of a concept of self vs other, let alone sister vs. mother in the PREnatal brain...) pretty much discredits this completely. Unless you were in there a good year and a half there is no way your brain is going to be developed enough to understand and recognize a name (heh, even if you were an adult have you ever TRIED to hear someone speaking from inside the uterus? I can't even hear people when I'm underwater in a swimming pool...)
Basically, if you were to say "I remember my birth! It was dark and warm, then light and loud and cold" then I'd only be SKEPTICAL... anything else, and you're just kidding yourself. Not that there is anything wrong with that, really, it just doesn't add much to a scientific discussion.
Re:Myelin. (Score:5, Insightful)
Peripheral myelin hits its peak around a year of age - it basically allows walking because feedback from the legs gets in sync with the motor commands.
But various parts of the brain continue to change myelin status through the first 6-7 years at least.
However, the lack of myelin doesn't imply the lack of coherent cerebral activity (although it certainly doesn't help).
Re:Self-concept and the earliest memories (Score:2, Insightful)
When we had our first kid, I read a book called The Scientist in the Crib (Gopnik, et al.), which contained a number of stories about studies that were done that show what babies in various stages of development can do and can comprehend. For example, most everyone knows that babies 'learn' persistence of objects --- if you put a toy behind your back in front of a one-month old, the kid thinks the toy has disappeared. Try the same trick with an 11-month old, and the kid knows the toy is still around.
Anyway, one progression of 'learning' is knowledge about knowledge. Kids start out not even knowing that other people are independent beings. Once they figure that out, they also have to learn that these other beings have different opinions than they do (I don't like brussel sprouts, but mommy does). Even later than that comes the knowledge that beliefs can change. For example, you show a young 3-year old a candy box. You ask him what's inside. He says, "candy". You open it up, and show him it contains something else (say, crayons). You will not then be able to get the kid to believe that he ever thought there was anything but crayons inside the box. Even if he acts surprised when he first opens the box, he will tell you he always thought there were crayons in the box. And this is not because 3-year olds have bad memories --- it's been shown they can remember events for months. The problem is that they can't seem to remember their own beliefs and thoughts.
By the age of 4, though, this will change, and the kid will understand that he could have once believed something that was false. There is an aside in the book that says that the point when a child gains this type of knowledge seems to correspond with the point when the child begins to create autobiographical memories (what we adults think of as memory). The authors hypothesize that one cannot 'remember' like an adult until one understands basic concepts about one's own thoughts and feelings (including the concept that one can think something is true and later discover it was not).
Anyway, it's a very interesting book. Also, parents should not be too keen to have their kids learn how to 'remember', as one of the next skills they pick up is how to tell a lie.
HYPNOSIS IS A CROCK (Score:5, Insightful)
For a quick read-up, check this link [fmsfonline.org] from the False Memory Syndrome Foundation's website.
A quick read of almost any post-mortem on the whole "multiple personality disorder" craze of several years ago should also raise your skepticism. My roommate's own mother had her shrink succeed in giving her a case of dissociative identity disorder that she did not have before she started seeing this 'doctor' through a combination of hypnosis and directed questioning.
And don't think the professional hypnotists are going to give you an entirely truthful explanation of the benefits and risks of what they do - the fact of the matter is, if they admitted the truth, they would not only be jobless, but would be opening themselves to all sorts of malpractise suits. Asking a hypnotist if hypnotism works is a bit like asking a door-to-door vaccum cleaner salesman if his product really works.