#Childhood infantile amnesia how to#

After the babies were shown these two sets of images several times, the hippocampus responded more strongly to the structured image set than to the random image set.

In the other, images appeared in a random order that offered no opportunity for learning. One set of images appeared as a structured sequence containing hidden patterns that could be learned.

#Childhood infantile amnesia how to#

“A fundamental mystery about human nature is that we remember almost nothing from birth through early childhood, yet we learn so much critical information during that time - our first language, how to walk, objects and foods, and social bonds,” said Nick Turk-Browne, a professor of psychology at Yale and senior author of the paper.įor the new study, the Yale team used a new functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology to capture activity in the hippocampus in 17 babies, aged three months to two years old, as they were presented two sets of images on a screen. The findings were published May 21 in the journal Current Biology.

However, a new brain imaging study by Yale scientists shows that infants as young as three months are already enlisting the hippocampus to recognize and learn patterns. Many scientists have attributed this so-called “infantile amnesia” to a lack of development in the hippocampus, an area of the brain located in the temporal lobe that is crucial to encoding memory. One trait shared by all humans is that they don’t remember specific life episodes that occurred before the age of 3 or 4.