Why We Forget Our Early Memories: Understanding Childhood Amnesia
Childhood amnesia is the inability of most adults to remember events from early life, including their birth.
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Researchers have yet to pin down a precise explanation for why childhood amnesia occurs.
Freud proposed that childhood amnesia occurs to repress traumatic or sexual urges during that time.
Childhood amnesia was previously thought to be caused by undeveloped memory-making parts of babies' brains.
Children as young as 3 months old can form long-term memories, but the type of memories that stick around differs from explicit memories..
Babies are born with intact implicit memories, but explicit, or episodic, memory that records specific events does not carry information over the three-year gap.
Childhood amnesia is more complex than previously thought, with nuances in young children's memory capabilities.
Explicit memory develops later than implicit memory, which may explain why childhood amnesia occurs.
Memories are formed by creating neural connections in the brain, but these connections are often not strong enough to survive into adulthood.
Further research is needed to fully understand the mechanisms behind childhood amnesia and memory formation in young children.