9/29/21, 9:53 PM How our memory develops - Curious

As our brain develops, so does our memory.

Image source: Chris Goldberg / Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisgold/7916217030/).

How our memory develops

EXPERT REVIEWERS

Dr Kaori Ikeda (/curious/person/dr-kaori-ikeda)

Science Policy Officer
Australian Brain Alliance

Hayley Teasdale (/curious/person/hayley-teasdale)

PhD candidate
University of Canberra

ESSENTIALS

 Memories are formed by neurons that fire in our brains, creating or changing
networks of connections.
 Human brains aren’t fully developed at birth.

 As our brain develops in infancy and early childhood, so does our capacity to
remember.
 There are changes in the brain’s prefrontal cortex during puberty and
adolescence, with corresponding changes in our memory abilities.

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Have you ever wondered why you can’t remember being a baby? Or why you can easily remember all the words to a song you
learnt as a teenager—even if that was 20 (or more) years ago?

The answers to these questions may lie in the way our memory system develops as we grow from a baby to a teenager and into
early adulthood. Our brain is not fully developed when we are born—it continues to grow and change during this important period
of our lives. And, as our brain develops, so does our memory. Let’s wander down memory lane and take a look.

Um … What’s memory again?

First, a quick recap of the basics.

Memory isn’t a video camera

Many of us think of our memory as being a bit like a recording device—a video camera, say. We imagine it faithfully recording events in detail
which we can, at some later stage, retrieve by simply pressing the ‘play’ button.

But this video-camera idea of memory isn’t really accurate. That’s because memories aren’t just static recordings which are ‘there’ to be
accessed. Rather, memories are dynamic—they’re always changing. They can become stronger or weaker over time. They can become
distorted, and they can be manipulated. What we remember and how we remember it depends on when we do the remembering, and what
meaning and experience we bring to that memory. In fact, every time we remember something, we alter that memory a little bit.

Memories are made when neurons fire

Neurons are nerve cells which send electrochemical signals to each other. As a person processes an event, neurons in the brain pass
information through synapses (tiny gaps between neurons). This invites surrounding neurons to start firing, creating a network of connections
of various strengths. It’s this persistent change in the strength and pattern of connections that is a ‘memory’.

There are different kinds of memory

There are a number of different kinds of memory (/people-medicine/memory). It can be explicit (consciously remembered) or implicit
(unconscious). Good at remembering facts and figures? That’s what’s known as your semantic memory. Able to thrash your partner at
Pacman without even thinking, even though you haven’t played for years? You can thank your procedural memory, which is all about learned
motor skills.

Memories are stored in different, interconnected parts of the brain

Memories aren’t just stored in just one place in the brain. Rather, different (interconnected) parts of the brain
specialise in different kinds of memories. For example, an area of the brain called the hippocampus is important
for storing memories of particular things that happened in your life, known as episodic memories.

Memories are formed by

neurons (pictured) that fire in
our brains, creating or
changing networks of
connections. Image source:
ZEISS Microscopy / Flickr.

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What happens when you remove the hippocampus? -…

-…

 
Video: What happens when you remove the hippocampus? (TED-Ed / YouTube). View video details and transcript.

From birth to adolescence

Infancy and childhood

Can you remember your first birthday? Your second? If not, don’t panic—you’re not alone. Adults rarely remember events from
before the age of three, and have patchy memories when it comes to things that happened to them between the ages of three and
seven. It’s a phenomenon known as ‘infantile amnesia’.

So why is it so hard to remember being a baby or toddler? Is it simply because our first, third, and even seventh birthdays
happened a long time ago, and our memories have naturally faded? Not necessarily. In fact, a 40-year-old adult will usually have
very strong memories of adolescence (more about that later) which, for them, happened more than 20 years ago. A 15-year-old, on
the other hand, will be unlikely to remember something that occurred when they were two, even though it happened only 13 years
ago.

WHAT DO BABIES REMEMBER?

It used to be thought that the reason we can’t remember much of our early childhood is because, as young children, we just aren’t
able to make stable memories of events. You can’t access a memory, the logic goes, if it’s not there!

But it turns out that infants and small children can and do form memories. This includes both implicit memories (such as procedural
memories, which allow us to carry out tasks without thinking about them) and explicit memories (like when we consciously
remember an event that happened to us).

Our ability to remember things for long periods of time does, however, progressively get better throughout childhood. In experiments
in which young children were taught to imitate an action, for example, six-month-olds could remember what to do for 24 (but not 48)
hours, while nine-month-olds could remember what to do one month (but not three months) later. By 20 months of age, infants could
still remember how to do a task which they were shown a whole year earlier
(http://ericastiftelsen.se/doc/EPU_13.16/Bauer_P_2006.pdf).  

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Interestingly, recent research in rats has revealed that, despite the apparent loss of early episodic memories, a latent trace of the
memory of an early experience remains for a long period of time
(http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.4348.html)—and can be triggered by a later reminder. This may
explain why early trauma can influence adult behaviour and increase the risk of future mental disorders.

Can you remember your first

birthday? Most of us can’t—a
phenomenon known as
infantile amnesia. Image
source: Justin McGregor /
Flickr.

OUR CHANGING BRAIN

Neuroscientists studying memory in animals (such as rats and monkeys) have discovered that it’s not just people who experience
infantile amnesia.  It seems to be common to animals whose brains, like ours, keep developing after they’re born. At birth, a human
baby’s brain is only a quarter of its adult size. By the age of two, it’ll be three-quarters of the size of an adult brain. This change in
size correlates with the growth of neurons and the testing and pruning of connections (more about that later). So what does the fact
that our brains are still developing in infancy and early childhood mean for our memories?

Infantile amnesia appears to

be common to animals whose
brains keep developing after
they’re born. Image source:
Imtiaz Ahmed / Flickr.

Let’s take a look at the hippocampus—that part of the brain which is especially important in the formation of episodic memories
(memories of events that happened to us). While many parts of the brain keep developing and changing after we’re born, it’s one of
only a few regions that keeps producing new neurons into adulthood. When we’re little, for example, a part of the hippocampus
called the dentate gyrus is in overdrive, making neurons at a great rate. These new neurons are then integrated into hippocampal
circuits. Although the production of new neurons continues in adulthood, the rate of activity slows down.

Scientists think that this rapid rate of neuron production in childhood could contribute to our higher rate of forgetting when we’re
young. How? By forming new connections with memory circuits, the masses of new neurons may disrupt existing networks of
already-formed memories.
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Watching an emotional movie

after studying could help you
get better marks. Image
source: charamelody / Flickr.

Adolescence
STILL CHANGING?

While early childhood has long been recognised as an important time for brain development, it used to be thought that it was all
over long before we hit puberty. But it’s now known that our brain keeps developing and changing during puberty and adolescence.
In particular, our prefrontal cortex, which is important for executive functions like controlling our behaviour, shows important
changes at this time. And, as these areas of our brain continue to change and develop, so does our memory.

THE REMINISCENCE BUMP

The words to a corny love song, the moves to the Macarena, even the boring, everyday stuff—if it was part of our adolescence,
we’re more likely to remember it 20, 30 or even 40 years later. A number of studies have shown that adults over the age of about 30
have more memories from adolescence and early adulthood than from any other time of their lives, before or after—a phenomenon
known as the ‘reminiscence bump’.

It’s thought that this is because, when we form a new self-image, we encode robust and lasting memories that are relevant to that
self. In other words, we are most likely to favour memories that reinforce our ideas of who we are. Since adolescence is a key time for
the emergence of a stable and enduring self, it’s also the period we tend to remember most strongly.

Our tendency to remember

events (as well as books, films
and music) from adolescence
is known as the reminiscence
bump. Image source: Ozzy
Delaney / Flickr.

MORE MYELIN

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You’ve probably heard of ‘grey matter’. Often used as a kind of shorthand for the cells of the brain, grey matter is largely composed
of densely packed neurons.

But go beneath this ‘topsoil’ of the brain and you’ll discover, filling nearly half of it, a mass of communication cables (axons) which
connect neurons in different parts of the brain. This is white matter. The cables are coated in a fatty substance called myelin, which
give them the white colour that shows up on an MRI. Myelin acts like insulation around the axons, allowing messages (in the form of
electrical signals) to be carried more quickly between areas of the brain. The more myelin, the quicker the messages will travel.

Thanks to MRI technology, scientists have been able to observe what happens to myelin in our brains during childhood and
adolescence. They’ve found that, while sensory and motor brain regions become fully myelinated (coated in myelin) in first few
years of life, myelination in our frontal cortex continues well into adolescence (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16492261).

SYNAPTIC GROWTH AND TRIMMING

In our first few months of life, our brains get busy making lots and lots of synapses (connections between neurons), until we end up
with many more than we’ll eventually have as adults. Over the following few years, these connections are gradually pruned.
Depending on our experiences, some connections are strengthened while others disappear until, eventually, the density of our
synapses reaches adult levels.

But, in our prefrontal cortex, it seems that this happens a second time. As we hit puberty, corresponding with a turbulent time of
growth and learning in the rest of the body, there is another wave of synaptic proliferation in the brain. Then, as we move through
adolescence, these connections are again pruned back and reorganised. This pruning makes the existing connections more
efficient, so it’s essential to cognitive processes such as memory.

Because our frontal and prefrontal cortex continue to develop in these ways during puberty and adolescence, we might expect to
see a corresponding improvement in executive functions to do with memory which are associated with these frontal regions of our
brain. And indeed, this has been found to be the case: experiments have shown that our performance on complex working memory
tasks continues to improve in adolescence, as does our prospective memory (our ability to remember to do things in the future).

Conclusion

We all know that our childhood and adolescence is a time when our bodies go through huge changes. What might not be so
obvious are the hidden changes in that dynamic, and sometimes mysterious, place that is our brain. And, as we’ve seen, as our
brain develops, so does our memory.

Nova would like to thank the Queensland Brain Institute for their assistance in producing this topic.

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psychology lifestyle human body

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