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What's Your Earliest Memory?
spazoid12 writes "I've been curious lately about memory. For example, why is it that my earliest memory is from about 7 years of age? (I'm mid-30's now) Most people I know remember much further back. How far back can a person remember? Is there a theoretical limit? What are the requirements for acquiring memories? I've read that oxygen is one; as in actual breathed-in stuff. This is supposed to explain why you can't remember anything from within the womb. That seems silly to me. My own theory (with nothing to back it up) is that language is required. We spoke mostly Brasilian Portuguese and some Russian in the home up until I was about 5 or 6. We moved to Brasil for a year when I was 8 and I barely remember anything from that trip. I really don't know either language today-- could this explain why I have no memories of those years? What if I re-learned those languages now, 30 years later? Would memories flood back?"
take a class, read a book, learn. Its around age three if I remember right, we cant remember those years because our long term memory isnt needed or developed.
I disagree. The infant brain is most certainly functional already at birth, and even before.
The brain will not be able to process information the way an adult or grown child will, because it will not have assimilated enough experience to relate one thing to another.
However, it is this very assimilation of experience that causes the brain to evolve into the adult, functional brain. Memory is not the only way this is done, but is definitely an important factor.
There is empirical evidence that the brain stores memories even before birth, and it is the opinion of many professional neuropsychologists that the brain in fact remembers EVERYTHING, but is generally unable to access very early momories, because the ability to order and catalogue these is not fully developed.
who said a rabbi had to do it? i'm sure a physician would do it at any age, just like they do most of them on newborns in the hospital. i doubt they'd care why, even if you're 22.
I can remember a dream I had when I was 5. You see, for some reason, it was Christmas in mid-summer. Santa was parachuting presents from his sleigh. I had managed to gather up quite a pile, and when I looked to my left, there was this curious little talking treestump. Yep, talking treestump. Nothing Ent-like, about 2 foot high with your standard blackened holes for an eyes and a mouth. Anyway, I asked it if it wanted to see my goodie stash, and it said "Yeah yeah yeah yeah" really quickly. I started to run to the pile (which I remember was in my Grandmother's yard next door) and that's all. Nothing else comes to mind about the dream, but for some reason, I can replay it perfectly in my head 20 years later.
I have memories of being in Playschool (before there was Headstart), desk hopping with my friend Jim (that was how I met him). Then there were the sit and spins my buddy Charlie and I always played with there. Me doing a maze thing and Adelle (Charlies mom and our teacher's assistant) telling me I was touching the lines. I remember the Charlie Brown statues they had on the tiny windows (this was in the basement of a Polish Catholic church). All of that at age four.
There are other memories, including my first crush (on a girl named Jamie when I was in Kindergarten), a moment where I confused one lady for my mom (similar hair styles was the reason) at Sunday School, other sporradic stuff. Even after all the pot I've smoked since I was a teenager, I still remember all that stuff. Guess I have a decent memory.
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
The infant brain is most certainly functional already at birth, and even before.
I didn't say it wasn't functional - clearly it is. If your brain doesn't function, you don't breathe, for a start.
However, it isn't organised. Large areas of it are unassigned to any specific function, and indeed will reassign to new functions in a way that an older brain cannot. For example, removing an entire cortex may not cause a hemiplegia (paralysis in half the body) if done early enough in life. Yet in an adult the effects of this are profound.
So many of the neurons that relate to higher functions aren't even assigned as such. This should come as no surprise to anyone that actually interacts with newborn children and infants. They don't really know how to do much.
In addition, the brain is not structurally complete. An example of this is the blood brain barrier which separates the adult brain from the circulation isn't fully functional until after the first year of life. Likewise myelination of nerve sheaths isn't even near completion until after 2 years of age.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
take a class, read a book, learn. Its around age three if I remember right, we cant remember those years because our long term memory isnt needed or developed.
Erm. Actually, long term memory has very little to do with it.
The reason why we cant remember things that have happened to us before the age of three or three and a half is because our self-concept usually develops around that time. Self-concept has many forms - for instance self-awareness, the ability to recognize oneself, which develops at about the age of 2. Autobiographical memory - or memories from a long time ago - are also a part of our self-concept, and they cannot exist without the "theory" or knowledge about how our mind works, how we think.
The "theory" of what our mind is and how it works develops sometime around the age of three, before that most children don't make a difference between things they have thought of themselves and things that other people have told them. You may have memories of things that happened to you at the age of one, but as you don't know that they happened to you, you can't remember them. Only after we learn how to use our brain can we actually remember things that have happened to us. Some people - the autistics for instance - never develop self-concept, and they can literally look into the mirror and not see themselves in there.
As to spazoid12's question if the memories would flood back after re-learning the languages spoken as a child, my answer would be - maybe. Self-concept is constructed through social interaction and interaction is based on language. As we use some language for thinking, it also has an influence on the way we think. Your self-concept may have changed because you stopped using these languages, and that may have caused the loss of memories. If you re-learn to speak portugese and russian, you may recover your memories, but probably not the way they were...
Towards a cleaner semiosphere!
Tanel
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Rating the parent as flamebait is not really fair....
False memories and hypnosis are related topics, as are both rooted in social psychological research, and more specifically, in research on social influence.
First, a little background on hypnosis:
There have been two schools of thought on the matter. The first is the state theorists which views hypnotic behaviour as qualitatively different from non-hypnotic behaviour and assumes that 'real' hypnotic responses are involuntary as opposed to deliberate. The hypnotic subject is seen as passive by proponents of this school of thoght, and their responses are believed to be caused by the hypnotist's suggestions. Hypnotizability is seen as a stable trait.
The second "school" is the cognitive-social theorists. Hypnotic behaviour, by proponents of this theory, is not seen as indication of a unique, trance-like state. White (1941) probably described it best when he wrote
Basically, cognitive-social theorists see hypnotic behaviour as both goal-directed and context-dependent; affected by expectancies, attitudes, and the willingness of the subject to accept the hypnotic role. Subjects seen as active participants who strive to generate hypnotic experiences. These theorists also recognize the stability of hypnotic responsiveness by the tendency of attitudes, expectancies, and interpretations of hypnotic responding to remain stable over time.
As for false memories, if you follow the state-theorists' views, then yes, the hypnotic subject, being at the relative mercy of the hypnotist, could be set to believe in events that did not occur; whereas the the cognitive-social theorists would be more likely to believe that the subject would be inclined to agree with the suggested memories while under hypnosis, but dismiss them otherwise, as expectations of the hypnotist's level control over the subject lowers.
Which view of hypnosis the reader chooses to adopt is up to him or her, however contemporary research his typically favored the second (cognitive-social) school (eg. Pekala, Kumar, & Hand, 1993; Silva & Kirsch, 1992; Spanos, Kennedy & Gwynn, 1984 [sorry, no electronic refs.]).
Most false memories are actually implanted via misinformation. One common pardigm used in the study of such effects is to show subjects a video clip of a car crash whereby a driver fails to yield at a yield sign. A question and answer session following the clip could contain questions such as "how fast was car A travelling when it ran the stop sign?" . Given this, the subject in the future is very likely to swear up and down that there was a stop sign present, when, in fact, it was a yield sign. This tactic of memory restructuring / false memory creation is often used by lawyers in cases where witnesses are unsure of the accuracy of their memories.
But Maaa! Everyone else has a
Most every study Ive read about the development of the brain in babys states that the brain does not finish developing the ability to get meaningful data from vision for two weeks or so after birth.
The brain knows there is light, but doesnt yet know how to focus those images or even form images in the mind at two days.
I wish I had some links to these but I have no idea where I read the articles in question.
There could be a number of other explanations for her 'early memorys' and in fact they may not be memorys at all.
To the consious mind, there is no difference between a memory of an event, and the actual event being percieved by the senses.
Durring normal waking state memorys are inhibited by the brain by hormones specifically so we dont confuse our senses with a memory.
However durring REM sleep (and im sure other stages the brain can be in) tose hormones are themselfs inhibited, which is why we dreams seem so real.
In essence, they are.
When a person becomes consious in the REM state (What is called lucid dreaming) you become free to use your imagination to create a memory of something going on or happening to you, and as the memory inhibitors are being inhibited, it seems like reality for all intents and purposes.
When the brain gets 'crossed' so to speak, and one is in REM state but still being able to percieve the senses and communicate with the outside world, your perception of reality changes almost totally.
What would be interesting is if she had some sort of cross between a hypnotic state of consiousness, and a lucid REM state, where she literally Could turn on and off the senses and resouces of her body to only percieve the parts of the world she wanted, which left more time to focus on the specific details she wanted to (IE no vision but very good sound perception as you desrcibed)
Maybe that was her way of interpreting 'two days from when she had consiousness' which would have been over the two week period.. But i dont believe it was literally when she was two.
Vision doesnt come until two weeks, and its believed consiousness and self awareness still another month or so after that.
Had she reminded you of some incident or another that you had forgotten then that would better demonstrate your point. For example, if she described that jumper your wife just loved dressing her in when she was 3 months old.
If you decide to quiz her on said jumper or some such, be on guard against Clever Hans syndrome.
I moved to Colorado at age 22 in May 1980, arriving the day Mount St. Helens erupted. I remember the miniscule amounts of ash accumulating on cars during the following week, but only because the TV news told me to look. I wouldn't have noticed the ash otherwise, and I doubt many other people would. I don't think there would have been enough ash on the ground to track into the house - in bare feet it would have been indistinguishible from other dirt.
But I lived in eastern Colorado. Perhaps the ash was heavier in western Colorado closer to the volcano.
Observationally, I've noticed that for most people, it only takes a couple verbal repetitions of a false or inaccuate memory before they develop an unshakeable belief in its reality.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?