HEALTH
Where Do Our Earliest
Go?
Words
Farhan Shah
Photos
Shutterstock
emories
M
When we are five, our
brain systemically prunes
the neural connections
it has created. Why are
we unconsciously and
intentionally killing our
memories?
It’s rather
ironic that
the organ
responsible for
memory creation
and storage
forgets where
it stored the
memory.
20
Family & Life • Christmas 2014
Every time I bring a date home to
meet the parents, my mother will
enthusiastically crack open the large
white cupboard at the living room to
retrieve the family photo albums, the
ones featuring me with a bucket on
my infantile head or playing with my
rubber ducky in a small basin. Then,
she will share the ignominious story,
during my diaper-wearing days, of
me retreating behind the closest door
whenever I needed to relieve myself.
Whenever I suddenly disappeared for
an extended period of time, my mother
would check behind all the doors in the
house and inevitably find me behind
one, my diaper soiled.
Yet, while my childhood adventures
made for great post-dinner
entertainment, sadly, I couldn’t
remember any of them. I recall falling
down on a hard, gravel path when I
was about four, which left a deep scar
that still remains on my knee, 24 years
later. I also remember the times when
I slept comfortably on my father’s lap
during long bus rides. However, the
bucket, the rubber ducky and the soiled
diapers felt foreign to me, as though
my mother was describing incidents
that happened to someone else.
This phenomenon of childhood
selective amnesia is not an unusual
occurrence. Researchers, scientists
and psychologists have thoroughly
studied this subject for decades but
only have they been able to pinpoint
accurately the reasons for this
forgetfulness.
REMEMBER, REMEMBER,
JUST NOT FOREVER
Up until the 1980s, the scientific
community generally assumed
that we retained no memories of
early childhood simply because the
consensus was that our brains during
that period were incapable of creating
memories. However, a landmark
study published in 1987 by the Emory
University psychologist Robyn Fivush
and her colleagues conclusively
demonstrated that children as young
as two were able to remember and
describe events that happened as far
back as six months ago.
Permanently remembering a memory
is a bit like making agar-agar. You
mix all the ingredients before
putting them into a
mould. Then, you
put the concoction
and the mould into
the refrigerator to
let it set. You just
have one problem
though – your
mould has a hole
at the bottom
and you are
in a race to
freeze the agaragar before all
the ingredients
leak out. Young
children have a
bigger hole in their
moulds compared
to teenagers
and adults.
The long-term memory creation
process is beautiful in its complexity
and requires a series of biological and
psychological impulses to fire together WHY YOU
at the same time. The raw material –
FORGET A
sights, sounds, smells, etc. – registers MEMORY
So, what happens to
in our cerebral cortex, which is
these bountiful childhood
responsible for cognition. Then, these
memories? We lose them
material travels to the hippocampus,
located just beneath the cerebral
cortex, to undergo what scientists
call bundling. The hippocampus of a
young child, unfortunately, is not fully
developed, making it hard for his or her
brain to form long-term memories.