From: Sue 16/11/99 11:05:53 Subject: Memories post id: 7615 What age are your youngest or first memories from? I can remember my brother's birth, he is 23 mths younger than me. Are memories harder to remember from babyhood 'cause our brains didnt "store" the memories (being too busy doing other growing stuff)or ??? sue :} From: Dan B. 16/11/99 11:38:50 Subject: re: Memories post id: 7623 Funny you should mention that. I have two memories - very vague ones, from when I was just over one year old. Most people don't believe you when you say that you remember stuff from that early in you life. As for why, I beleive it's something to do with the massive brain development in your younger years. Dan. From: Bill Sherwood 16/11/99 11:58:29 Subject: re: Memories post id: 7628 FWIW, when I was in PNG, I - by accident, and it's a long story as to why - took WAY too much chloroquin, and it did a bit of damage. I couldn't remember much of the earlier parts of my life, and now, after about seven years I'm starting to get most of that back again. Even so, I can't remember anything other than sill 'pictures' of the first ten years or so. A bit of shame, I guess, but since I don't really remember it I don't know what I've missed. From: brad 16/11/99 11:59:05 Subject: re: Memories post id: 7629 I think with memory there may be an element of real vs. artificial. Let me explain: I have a memory of receiving the sabin vaccine as a child. I can remember the colour of the solution (pink), the method of delivery (it was on a sugar cube), and the place where the clinic was (Seven Hills, in Sydney). This would have happened when I was 18 months old! I would be surprised if I could really remember back that far. What may have happened is that, later in my life, this story was recounted. The retelling of the event may have become the memory of the event. Who knows. Spooky, huh? brad From: Kothos 16/11/99 12:45:10 Subject: re: Memories post id: 7643 I think that could definately be a part of it. However I also kinda sorta have memories from when I was about 18-24 months, only 2 or 3 and very vague ones. I just can't tell if these a real memories or just the result of stories my parents kept tellimg me my whole life. In any case they're kinda foggy, like my brain couldn't process all the info and so from memory it seemed as if I suffered from tunnel vision or something. From: michael c 16/11/99 12:55:03 Subject: re: Memories post id: 7647 The earliest I can remember is being in hospital with meningitis at 3 years of age. I remember specific events that my parents can only remember with prompting. No idea why we don't remember anything earlier, but then again I have forgotten a lot of things that happened afterwards too. Michael C J From: helen 16/11/99 13:15:28 Subject: re: Memories post id: 7656 My earliest memory is of our mango tree lying on its side in the back yard. It had been blown over by a cyclone, but I don't remember anything about the cyclone (I have subsequently been told, of course.) I was three. From: helen 16/11/99 16:56:44 Subject: re: Memories post id: 7735 our general inability to remember things before we were two or three is called infantile amnesia. Last I looked at it, there were three major theories competing to explain it: neurophysiological development: the human brain doesn't finish developing until it's about ten years old. One of the slowest structures to finish itself off is the hippocampus, a very complex wee piece of grey matter. As part of the limbic system, it's intimately involved in emotion and motivation, and has more recently been identified as being central to the storage of long term memories. There is reasonable evidence that the hippocampus may not be sufficiently developed before the age of three or so to allow memories to be stored reliably. language development: human memories are frequently narrative; we tell autobiographical stories with beginnings, middles and ends. Long term memory storage co-incides with language development, and it may be that children only start to lay down reliable memories once they have the opportunity to rehearse them with others, via their new-found language skills. In support of this, little girls are better able to retrieve early memories, which fits in with their (usually) earlier language acquisition, and parents often rehearse life events more with their daughters. different memory storage processes: despite all this, infants obviously do learn, so what's happening in there? It may be that children under the age of two or three are simply using a different storage method, and that these memories are inaccessible by adult retrieval methods. Young children have physiological reactions to drawings they made earlier in life (compared with similar control drawings), even though they don't remember making the drawings. Maybe a different memory process is at work. I don't know what the current state of the research is, but I wouldn't mind betting it turns out to be a combination of these things. :-)helen This forum is un-moderated. The views and opinions expressed are those of the individual poster and not the ABC. The ABC reserves the right to remove offensive or inappropriate messages.