Your first memories might be wrong, according to the study

If you have memories of specific events from the moment you were just a baby relaxing in your crib, you might not remember these events at all. According to a new study, your first memories may be wrong because humans can not form memories before the age of two. In the study of 6,641 people, 40% indicated that their first memory occurred before the age of two years. However, a myriad of studies have shown that people can not create memories until the age of three.

The study of researchers from City, University of London, Bradford University and Nottingham Trent University, and published in the journal Science found that those who brought back memories before the 39 Two years old may not remember the incidents that they consider their first memories. Even as adults, some people confuse the things that were told to them with real memories or even adopt other people's memories as being theirs. This is probably the case of those who claim memories as early as childhood.

"Since many of these memories were dated before the age of two, the authors suggest that these fictitious memories are based on memorized fragments of early experiences – such as a pram, family relationships, and feeling sad – and some facts or knowledge about their own childhood or childhood that may have been derived from photographs or family conversations, "explained a press release about the study

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just because your brain can not form memories like a baby, it does not mean that things that happened to you at that age can not affect you later. "It's common to have suffered early trauma in life and have no memory of it, "Allan Schwartz, LCSW, Ph.D. said in his advice column on the Mental Help website.This means that some things you can not remember because you were too young can lead certain emotions and behaviors later in life.

Moreover, if you have been informed of an incident or a specific event, your brain could fool you. believing that you really remember it. "We suggest that what a memory has in mind when we recall improbably old fictitious memories is an episodic-remembered mental representation consisting of memorized fragments of early experiences and some facts or knowledge about their own childhood. childhood, "Dr. Shazia Akhtar, the first author of the study and senior research badociate at the University of Bradford, said in the press release.

"Crucial, the person who remembers them does not know that it's fictitious. In fact, when they say that their memories are fake they often do not believe it," said the professor Martin Conway, director of the Center for Memory and Law at City, University of London and co-author of the paper, in a press release. "This is partly due to the fact that systems that allow us to remember things are very complex, and it is only when we are 5 or 6 that we form adult memories due to the maturation of the brain.

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However, it is important to note that not all early childhood memories are fake – the event that you may remember may have occurred, but your current memory of it could be somewhat manufactured. In other words, the probability that you remember your mother pushing you through Central Park in a green stroller when you were a baby is thin, but you may have reconstituted this "memory" to from family stories and look at pictures of you in the park. Your brain then adopted this scenario as a memory, despite the fact that you could not have kept this memory as a little child.

"For this person, this type of memory could have come from someone who said something like: The person then imagined what it could have been," says Professor Conway. over time, these fragments then become a memory and often the person starts to add things like a row of toys along the top. "

Overall, researchers are still very ignorant of how the brain works Human, according to the Stanford Medicine Journal Scope. "We know very little about the brain, we know the connections, but we do not know how information is processed," said the neurobiologist Lu Chen in an article on the subject.For example, some people remember very little about childhood while others can tell specific details until what they wore and what that they had to eat.

The principal The conclusion here is that understanding of the human brain is constantly evolving. The best minds in science and medicine are actively studying the mysteries of the human brain, but the real evidence on how this muscle actually works is years – even centuries -. If you have a memory of childhood, talk to your family to try to reconstruct the reason why you think you remember this specific event. You may be surprised at what you discover.