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?"

Comments

hypnosis

[drDugan]

you ought to try hypnosis. I've
observed many sessions, and the results
are astounding. If you are able to be
hypnotized (I've tried, but never been able
to do it) -- it may help you remember early
memories. Have someone that you trust
put you under, or a professional.

Re:hypnosis

[tyler_larson]

I had a girlfriend about 8 years ago who talked in her sleep (not mindless babble; very intelligent conversation) and slept A LOT because she had mononucleosis.

When she was asleep, she behaved a lot like people do when they're hypnotized. When asleep (and only when asleep) her hearing was amazing: she could hear a whisper 80 feet away when we were specifically trying to not let her hear. She also had an absolutely perfect memory of everything. And I do mean everything. She could quote to me word-for-word lengthy conversations I had had with her weeks, even months, earlier.

It might be worth mentioning that she, though absolutely alert, would refuse to open her eyes when she was asleep. She said it made her dizzy. She did just fine without them, though. She could move around, interact with her environment, walk, and I even saw her jog a few steps on a hill outside. Eyes closed the whole time.

Even more frightening still, when she was asleep, she mentioned quite casually that she had complete access to all her prior memories, and furthermore had absolute control over which of those her awake self could remember. She had to pick and choose which ones to give access to "other" awake self because when awake, she way too distracted by life and everything to be able to remember it all. It's as if the pathway to the memories was there, but she couldn't get to them because her mind was so busy doing what it has to do to stay awake.

Looking back, I think that her increased hearing ability and amazing memory were somehow tied to the fact that she refused to use her eyes. Just think of how much computing power it takes to process video, particularly if your primary task is recognizing what the objects you see are. Immagine having a computer that had the power to process images in real time with the power, speed and accuracy our own minds have. Now immagine shutting off that facility and using that processing power elsewhere. I think shutting down image processing takes a tremendous strain off your mind and could, in theory, free it to do more deep introspection than otherwise possible.

I once asked her when she was alseep what her earliest memory was. She said she was very small, laying on her stomach, looking down at her blanket but wanting to look up. She said she felt frustrated because she didn't know how to move. I guess she still hadn't figured how to move her limbs. I don't know how old that would put her at, but certainly not much. She estimated she was about two (days, not years).

She had no reason to lie about it either (and, it seemed, was in fact incapable of intentional deception when she was asleep) so at least she believed what she said. Whether it's true or not I don't know, but I have no reason to disbelieve her. She did things asleep that were far more amazing than remembering her infancy.

Re:hypnosis

[Naikrovek]

That is amazing.

My girlfriend can do things kind of like this, she walks around with her eyes shut, and i can ask her questions about anything i want and she always answers them clearfully and honestly (to my knowledge). I can ask her questions about anything - ex boyfriends, how she is feeling about herself, how she is feeling about me, what she wants for christmas (she got what she wanted) and what she got me for christmas (i didn't get what i wanted, but she didn't lie).

it is amazing to lay down with someone who hypnotizes themsleves. if she had a rough day, i can scratch her head or massage her feet (putting her to sleep) and after she's been asleep for about 20 minutes i can tell her that everything is going to be alright, that the people at work are morons or whatever, and the next day she's a new person. I've never had to talk her into the same thing twice, either. once i tell her that person X is a liar, she believes it unconditionally from that day on. A very powerful tool, but very dangerous also. I told her the plot to lord of the rings in her sleep last night and now today we watched the extended cut of the fellowship of the ring not once, but twice! she was shocked that she suddenly could understand the difference between Sauron and Saruman. every little plot detail that i told her about she pointed out to me, explaining them to me, and she could *not* believe that she suddenly understood the whole movie without asking me questions about it.

The subconscious mind is very powerful.

I wonder what would happen if these two women wound up sleeping in the same room one night - would they talk all night long in their sleep? what would they talk about - and would they recognize that they were both asleep and talk in some mumbles that you or I could not understand but that they could? I'd love to know what could happen if these two (or any two) could get something going while they were both asleep.

wow.

Memories...

[thebeagle]

Wow. This is a new stretch for Slashdot. Slow news day or something?
Under hypnosis, people seem to be able to remember far more details from the past... which would imply that what our brain stores is far more intricate than what we can pull to mind in common conversation. Some people believe we could train ourselves to remember more... just as we can train ourselves to remember dreams if we write them down anything we remember as soon as we awake. Proust's "Remembrances of Things Past" is a lovely study on memory, what is remembered, and why. I've never gotten past the first thousand pages, though...

Well...

[Oliver Defacszio]

...relying on my skills as a network administrator (and my Psyc textbook), the following is generally held:

Humans cannot physically remember events that happen before the age of two. Any "memories" that appear to come from prior to that age are either a) purposely or inadvertantly implanted by a third party ("remember when..."), or b) the result of typical happenings for a very young child. For example, many children fall out of bed at least once, so you may remember doing so too whether or not it actually happened.

Re:Well...

[CaptainCarrot]

Humans cannot physically remember events that happen before the age of two.

Nonsense. I'm uncertain of my age at the time the earliest event I can remember occurred, but I was almost certainly younger than 2. I might even have been younger than 1.

It happened in the first house I remember living in, which was in a small community near Manville, NJ. It was a small Cape Cod, two floors, with a front door that opened up into the living room right before the stairs. Against the wall beneath the stairs was a desk, and looking straight towards the back of the house from the desk you could see into the kitchen, where the back door was. In the living room hanging on the wall that seperated that room from the kitchen and above the couch, was my mother's old violin. This approximately dates the memory; the violin was replaced by a picture by the time I was 2.

The memory is admittedly an isolated one, but based on certain features of it I may even have been an infant at the time, which would mean that my parents had been living in that house for less than a year. That would explain the primitive state of the decor. I was laying down near the desk, in a cradle of some kind, and from where I was I could see the violin over the couch and the entrance to the kitchen.

Now, my Dad has always had a somewhat twisted sense of humor, and enjoyed the effects his magnificent (at the time) bass voice could have on people. He had a trick where he'd make a growling noise through a paper towel tube. The tube would add resonance to the growl, and it really would sound like a large animal snarling. While he'd do this, he'd roll his eyes back a little. When I saw him doing it later in life, he was using it to freak out the cats and the dog. They're reaction was pretty funny, I guess.

This is what I deduce he was doing to me, but that's not precisely what my memory conveys. What I remember is that his mouth elongated into a cone, with the wide end near me, and the snarling with his eyes rolled back. It scared the bejeezus out of me. I think my brain was at the time still too immature to process extreme perspectives correctly; thus the illusion of the tube as a cone. I also recall a kind of helpless feeling, as if I was unable to move myself away.

This literally gave me nightmares for years afterwards. The figure of my father, his eyes rolled back and his mouth distorted into a cone, was a stock monster in my childhood nightmares, only disappearing with puberty. The early memory that was the germ of it remained however, and it was only relatively recently that I put 2 and 2 together and figured out what exactly that memory meant and what my Dad must have done. I haven't done this kind of thing to my own kids, not until they were old enough to understand it was a joke and would laugh at it instead of becoming frightened.

This is obviously not a stock happening; not only is it too specific and idiosyncratic, but I remember details about the house that put an upper limit on my age at the time. Nor was it implanted by anyone. My Dad never mentioned it and I don't think my mother even knew about it. It's purely visual, with nothing verbal about it at all except for the snarling, and required a certain amount of thought to decipher in a meaningful way. No later verbal description could possibly have implanted the images I recall.

As poorly as the brain's chemistry is understood, psychologists ought to be more cautious about declaring some phenomena "impossible" than they evidently are.

Re:Physc

[Squareball]

I can remember when I was 1 year old. Not a LOT of things, but I remember one thing, and that was a big red ball that I got from my mom. Of course it wasn't actually that big, according to my mom it was a tiny plush ball that was red and I loved it but my older brother took it and lost it outside just a short while after I got it. I also remember taking my first step. I had remembered it for a while but wasn't sure how acurate my memory was.. as in.. if it really was my first steps.. but sure enough.. I told my dad the story and he was floored that I could recall all the details. But it didn't suprise me because when I took my first step I stood up and I was under the kitchen table.. and I hit my head.. then I fell down, crawled out from under the table.. stood up and walked 3 steps towards my dad who was on the phone.. I was holding my head and crying. I remember my older brother was up on the counter getting the oat meal out of the cubbord. I remember when I was 3 and took off my swimmies and jumped in the pool thinking I could swim.. and then I sunk to the bottom of the pool and sat there thinking that I was really screwed... and then my father grabbed me outta the water and yelled at me. So I dunno what it is.. but maybe some people's long term memory develops quicker? I know that at age 3 I freaked my parents out when I said that I wanted to be an explorer.. my mom said "like Christopher Columbus?" thinking that she'd now teach me about him.. but I said "Well there isn't any thing left here to explore.. so I think I should die and then go explore there". lol

Why we do not remember our early years

[deragon]

I remember reading/hearing that the reason why we remember so few from our early years is that there is a hypothesis which states that our memory forgets in the younger years to protect our sanity.

You see, a young kid goes through very rough traumatizing experiences (falling down, being psychologically hurt when mother says no or leave for a few hours, etc...) Off course, these are benin experiences for us, adults, but for a new, undevelopped brain, they are tragedies. If we would remember those experiences, we might have developped some psychological problems. Forgetting our younger years would help us keep our sanity until the brain is well formed.

As I said, its a hypothesis I heared somewhere. If anybody got a link to this, please share it with us.

Myelin.

[blair1q]

The human brain's development is designed to enable our upright posture.

The human femal pelvis is a bowl with a small hole in it, unlike those of our forebears, which are tubes with large holes.

As a result, a large head would block our birth. But if we had small heads, we'd have small brains. But we don't. How does it work?

The human brain is not fully formed at birth. The insulation on the wiring is left out, saving most of the volume the brain will eventually attain. This insulation is called "myelin".

The brain's wires (axons) aren't fully myelinated until about 6 months after we are born. So a human baby can have no coherent cerebral activity at a younger age. It's mostly hardwired activity coordinated by the more primitive portions of the hindbrain.

Re:Myelin.

[AeternitasXIII]

But various parts of the brain continue to change myelin status through the first 6-7 years at least.

Its generally believed that the average for myelination process to complete is around age 25. An increased rate of myelination in various areas of the brain is strongly correlated with increased rates of learning skills associated with the myelinating region.

The first regions to complete myelination are related to spoken and auditory linguistics, followed by vision processing. Now, given that basic auditory processing and visual processing occur in the temporal lobes, and given that one of the other primary functions of the temporal lobes is interacting with the hippocampus and amygdala to create, process and retrieve memory, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that myelinations of these regions facilitates the first memory formations. Your motor cortex, followed shortly by the rest of the frontal cortex, typically won't finalize myelination until your late teens, which parallels with the end of puberty and the slowing rate of growth. By the time you're in your mid-20s, myelination is completed with your prefrontal cortex (sentience and conscience) coming dead last.


However, the lack of myelin doesn't imply the lack of coherent cerebral activity (although it certainly doesn't help).

Just ask a person with multiple sclerosis whether or not the gradual loss of myelination in their motor cortex implies a lack of coherent cerebral activity in the motor cortex.

I can

[protest_boy]

I was born in June of 1979. Mount St. Helens erupted in May of 1980. I live in Colorado and can clearly remember the effects of the eruption. I can remember wiping ash off the fender of my Dad's truck, and I remember my neighbor washing his white car almost daily for a week. I can remember tracking ash into the house off my bare feet. I suppose it is possible that these "memories" were implanted in my brain but I can see myself doing these things from a FIRST person perspective. This is why I don't think these memories were suggested to me by my parents or anyone else.

Re:Memory needs prompts

[danamania]

The prompting thing I think, is a pretty likely thing. It helps, if nothing else. After I was born, my parents and I lived in a house along a river, one which we moved out of when I was 2 and a half, and into the house we lived in for the next 20 years or so.

I never would have said I remembered the old house, until I went to visit it as the whole old street/riverscape it was in was being re-landscaped. Most of the houses in the street were empty having already been bought out by the local council, and my parents took the chance to take a look through. I can't say I noticed anything about the front exterior of the place, but once inside I knew it intimately - where the kitchen was, the bricked up doorway in one of the bedrooms, the sun room and the two steps that led down into it, it all came flooding back in general terms like that. The backyard was also familiar, in its curious shape (thirty feet wide and hundreds long), the drain underneath blackberry bushes right up the back... the way it sloped off to one side...

Everything -fit- immediately, in the way that it usually takes me a few weeks to feel I know where everything is in a new place. It was an experience :).

Apart from that I can barely remember yesterday!

a grrl & her server

Me too.

[Nick Driver]

My earliest memory is also of my birth. Before all you disbelievers say bullshit... this is no bullshit.

Very few people can remember their birth and it is rare indeed, but true nonetheless, and is very special for those who can remember.

Before my birth I was conscious, aware of myself and knew I had sisters, and one was particularly closer to my mother and me during my mother's pregnancy. And indeed she spent a great deal of time staying very close with my mother during the last couple months of the pregnancy. I remember waking up one morning expecting to hear my sister's and mother's voices, but in a way I really wasn't aware that my mother was my mother... I thought that she was just another sister "out there" too. Something was not right that morning. I knew I was being taken to see "Doctor Knight". It's very strange that I knew his name although of course I'd never seen him before, but I think I must have known who he was from my mother's office visits during the pregnancy. He had been the family doctor for many years and delivered two of my sisters before me. Anyway, I don't recall much of the labor, but I remember hearing Dr. Knight's voice and the voices of all these strange nurses. I had no idea what they were saying of course, but Dr. Knight had a very distinctive deep voice that I still remember to this day, even though he is long gone many years now. I remember that before all the commotion, that I was comfortable and feeling just fine, and I did not like this disturbing thing that was happening and wished it would go away. I wanted to go back to sleep and just be with my "sisters" and be comfortable again. Everything was suddenly becoming very harsh. All of a sudden everything was blindingly bright and cold. There was a very bright overhead light on the ceiling of the delivery room (like in a typical hospital of the 1960's) and the brilliance of this lamp was painful. All these strange big people were there moving around and talking frantically and I did not like them. Doctor Knight was the first person to hold me but I did not know or understand who he was now. I don't even think I was capable of understanding the concept that I was a baby and was being held by a giant adult. I just remember screaming and crying so intensely that I could not catch my breath and I could not stop crying either. I wanted to be back with the comfort that I thought was my "sister" (but was actually my mother). I do not remember much detail about what happened after that, except being exhausted and falling asleep again. That's it.

I am in my 40's now. My mother died of heart disease a few years ago. As I write this post, my tears are flowing quite freely right now.

To those of you out there who remember your own births.... keep that memory alive in you as long as you live. It's very important whether you like it or not. I know that I will remember it as long as I live, and that it will very likely be what I'm thinking about when it comes my time to die.

Peace.

Childhood is vividly clear to me

[colmore]

I can penpoint the age of my first memory well. My mother was pregnant with my brother and sister, she was in bed under a big blue quilt. She read me the book "I can count to 100" and something about swamp animals in a treehouse.

My brother and sister were born about a month before my third birthday, so this was during my late 2s.

Everything after that is pretty clear, up till about age 9 or 10. I have hundreds of vividly clear images from my early childhood. Then around middle-school life started to suck so I blocked out about three years.

And for everyone out there in their mid-teens: it gets better don't worry. wash your face and lose some weight though. yes, they all notice. and christ, don't let your parents pick out your clothing. yes, at your age stupid superficial things like this are key to happiness.

Fabricated Memories

[Tuxinatorium]

People have a tendency to generate apocryphal memories of things they didn't remember before when shown pictures of their childhood over time. It works by the same principle as tampering with witnesses by showing them extraneous information and going over and over the events so much that they get confused. Psychological schema also play a role in filling in false details of vague or apocryphal memories. Psychologists can even evoke false memories of any traumatic childhood event that never occurred, using the proper coditioning.

induced memory

[Slashdotess]

This is probably induced memory (not sure the exact definition), as no one has been found to remember that far back. What happens is your parents or someone else tell you tidbits of moments during your birth, etc and your mind creates the memory. This happens a lot with people that witness a crime, after they've talked with so many people about it, many times their memory can change completely.

Re:Physc

[TrinSF]

Okay, I have an weird example that contradicts the "my parents told me" explanation. It concerns my daughter.

Every year I make elaborate Halloween costumes for my children. When my daughter was 7, I was fitting her costume, a cat beanie baby suit. I was reminiscing to her about previous costumes. Our conversation went like this:

Me: You were a cat before, you know....

Her: I know, I was!

Me: When you were three, I think, you had a black --

Her: *cutting me off* I was a cat before and I liked being a cat. And then I was the baby inside, and I could hear daddy singing to me. Then I was born, and I couldn't figure out, why is everyone talking to me and calling me by a different name? Then I realized it was because you didn't know I was a cat, I was a girl to you, and now I'm a girl, but I was a cat before.

Me: *weirded out* Errr, I meant, when you were three, you had a black cat suit for Halloween...

Yes, my daughter randomly spewed forth some kind of past life / womb memory. While I can believe that she had at some point been told that her father used to sing to her before she was born, none of us *ever* said anything about a past life, or the idea of past lives, or cats. She also has quite vivid memories of things that happened when she was a toddler, including things that happened to her when she was alone.

My other child, on the other hand, steadfastly maintains he has no memory of anything before fifth grade.