Scientists at Yale University have made a groundbreaking discovery showing that babies as young as one year old can form memories using brain processes similar to adults, challenging long-held beliefs about infant memory capabilities.
The research team, led by Nick Turk-Browne and Tristan Yates, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study brain activity in infants aged 4 months to 2 years while they viewed and later recalled images.
The study revealed that when an infant's hippocampus - the brain's memory center - was more active while viewing a new image, they were more likely to recognize that image later. This memory encoding occurred in the same posterior region of the hippocampus that adults use for forming episodic memories.
"When babies have seen something just once before, we expect them to look at it more when they see it again," explained Turk-Browne. The research showed that greater hippocampal activity during initial viewing correlated with longer viewing times when images were shown again.
While the findings applied across all 26 infants studied, the memory encoding was strongest in babies older than 12 months, suggesting a developmental progression in memory formation abilities.
This discovery challenges the prevailing theory that humans can't remember their earliest years because the hippocampus is too underdeveloped to form memories. Instead, the research suggests that babies can form memories but may have difficulty accessing them later in life.
The research team is now investigating what happens to these early memories over time. They are exploring whether infants and toddlers can remember videos taken from their perspective as babies, with early results indicating these memories might persist until preschool age before fading.
This study opens new possibilities for understanding how memory develops in infants and may eventually help explain why adults struggle to recall their earliest experiences, despite having formed memories during that time.
The findings were published in the journal Science on March 20.