Do you still remember what happened before you were three years old? I think many people don't remember it, but many people will vaguely remember things when they were five or six years old, and even remember some things very clearly. What's going on? Why does the brain delete memories before the age of three?
Many people think that we only forget things that happened before the age of three when we grow up. However, according to research by American scientists, children have almost forgotten all the things that happened in their infancy when they were 7 years old. About 0% of the memory before the age of is retained; when children are eight or nine years old, their memory of the time before the age of three is only about 0%; by the time is ten years old, almost I have no memory of what happened before I was three years old.
This phenomenon was noticed by the famous psychologist Freud more than a hundred years ago. He also gave this phenomenon a name called "childhood amnesia".
From a psychological perspective, Freud believed that the human brain does not delete memories before the age of three, but stores these memories in a special place that is generally not accessible. However, if you encounter strong stimulation or are under hypnosis, there is a high possibility that these memories will be awakened.
However, this psychological explanation is still far-fetched, because memory is still related to the brain after all, and this psychological explanation is not scientific.
With the continuous development of research on the human brain, there are generally two mainstream explanations for why the brain deletes memories before the age of three.
The first explanation is , which is a necessary process for human brain development. Before the age of three, the human brain is still in the developmental stage, and its development is not yet complete and mature, especially the hippocampus related to memory.
The hippocampus is a pair of structures that look like a hippocampus. It is located between the thalamus and the medial temporal lobe of the brain. The hippocampus plays a very important role in the formation and consolidation of human memory.
Not only humans have hippocampus, but many animals also have hippocampus, such as monkeys, mice and other animals. Their hippocampus will continue to develop after birth and grow a large number of neurons.
Scientists once conducted an experiment in which they controlled the speed at which mice brains generate new cells, and found that when the speed at which mice generate new cells slows down, the mice have better memory and are more likely to form strong and clear memories; but when When mice generate new cells faster, their memory becomes poorer and they become more forgetful.
This conclusion is also extrapolated to humans. During the infancy and early childhood period, the brain growth and development rate of children under three years old is astonishing. When they are about 13 years old, their brain capacity reaches a peak. Period, At this time they have the brain capacity of 000ml .
The faster the brain grows, the faster memory is deleted, because the brain needs to make more space for new memories. The brain believes that skills learned in infancy are less important than skills learned later. , , so new skills and new memories are constantly appearing. In order to save the brain's energy consumption, past memories are deleted by the brain.
The growing new cells replace the original cells. As the hippocampus continues to produce new neurons, it will cut off old neural connections to form new neural networks.
When the brain is in adolescence or even young adulthood, the nerve cells and synapses of the brain are completely fixed, the brain is fully developed, and its memory is basically fixed. In the future, it will slow down with age. Slowly weakens and degrades.
The second explanation is that the formation of the language system will exacerbate children's forgetfulness of things before the language system has been formed.Language ability plays a great role in human memory. The information generated by the visual system cannot be accurately encoded, so visual memory is easily lost, and various details are lost; The information generated by the language system can be more accurately encoded. To be encoded and remembered accurately.
Infants and young children have basically not developed language skills when they are one or two years old. They only know some " baby words " that they can understand. As they gradually begin to learn to speak and language, their language skills also improve. At this time, the memory keywords in their minds when they could not speak will be replaced by the current accurate language vocabulary, so it is extremely difficult to remember things when they could not speak. , as time passed, those things were forgotten.
You can think about it, whether you have almost no memory of what happened before you started to speak.
The above are two explanations for why the brain deletes memories before the age of three. The human brain can be said to be the most magical and complex thing on earth, and memory is a very important part of the brain. In fact, about There are many interesting facts about memory.
For example, do you know why old people can't remember the things in front of them, but they can remember things very firmly when they were young?
This is because when a person is young, the number of neurons in the brain is very large, so the brain operates very efficiently, and the neural conditioned reflex is established very firmly, so the memory of young people is naturally very good.
But when people enter middle age, especially old age, the number of neurons in the brain will gradually decrease, and the connections between major nerves will also begin to weaken. At this time, the conditioned reflexes established by the brain will become very unstable. Solid, So as age increases, people's memory will become worse and worse.
However, although the brains of the elderly cannot establish new conditioned reflexes, the activity of neuron cells in their cerebral cortex has not stopped. So since they cannot establish new, previously established, and old conditions Reflections appear, and these conditioned reflexes are very strong.
So this is why the elderly remember the past very clearly but often forget the present.
Have you ever noticed that although people's memory can naturally forget many things, people's memories of some unpleasant and painful things are particularly profound. So for some people’s painful and bad memories, can the brain delete these memories?
Sounds like a scene described in a science fiction novel or movie. But in fact, scientists are also very interested in this issue, and have been studying the erasure and reconstruction mechanism of human brain memory, and have produced corresponding research results.
Researchers at the University of Bologna in Italy used a therapy called rTMs, which placed electromagnetic coils on participants’ heads to interfere with the activity of the brain’s prefrontal cortex. The results showed that although the participants remained There are original memories, but the psychological discomfort and fear have been significantly reduced.
Researchers say this is the first time such results have been obtained without giving patients medication, and in the future, this therapy may be used to treat patients with post-traumatic stress disorder .
No matter what, memory is a very magical skill of the brain. In order to enhance this skill, we must be good at using our brains, diligent in thinking, and master certain scientific skills. I hope everyone can have a good memory. Don't delay things because of a bad memory.
Author: Qiao Mu Proofreading Editor: W
