- What is the strength in, brother?
- Strength is in childhood!
- How valuable are childhood memories?
- How to remember your childhood?
- What does a child's memory hide?
We all come from childhood, it is then that we begin to explore the world, learn to take the first steps, to distinguish good from evil. This is the time when we don’t need to think about problems, we devote ourselves entirely to ourselves, spending carefree hours, playing with friends or simply doing our important things.
Unfortunately, not everyone’s childhood was a time of happiness and joy; not everyone was surrounded by unconditional love and care. There are people who refuse to remember the time when they were kids because it is painful for them and they do not want to traumatize themselves again.
The Institute of Reincarnation places special emphasis on the importance of childhood memories. There are a number of reasons for this, which explain the need to remember your childhood.
Why exactly childhood?
Having learned to use your memory perfectly, you can easily return to any moment of childhood, even not the most pleasant one, and use the tools of reincarnation to explore this situation and learn the necessary lessons for yourself.
It is from childhood that we begin to comprehend the world as it is around us, acquire the necessary skills, create our own experience, take our first steps, and form character.
It is in childhood that we create for ourselves the picture of the world that we see now, and it doesn’t matter whether we like it or not, this picture already exists.
And if it doesn’t completely suit us, and we try in every possible way to change something, we can’t do without a trip to childhood, we won’t be able to find those subtle threads that lead to the source of our problems.
What if childhood memories hurt?
Childhood memories contain not only happy and carefree moments, but also unpleasant and sometimes tragic ones. And quite naturally the question arises: “ Is it really necessary to return to these unpleasant memories that are still filled with negative emotions?”
All the troubles from childhood left their mark on our perception of ourselves and those around us, they caused phobias and complexes, and the most unpleasant thing is that they still harm our lives.
Have you ever noticed that some moments in life have a habit of repeating themselves? It would seem that the lesson has been completed, everything is understood, everything has been decided, a step forward has been taken. But a year later, the same situation is repeated with extraordinary accuracy, only with other people and other circumstances, but the essence is the same.
To solve this problem once and for all, you need to go back to childhood and analyze all the events that happened there from the height of your life experience. Believe me, everything will look completely different.
“I remembered really positive things from my childhood. I remembered mostly only the negative. But today during class I started to remember, it turns out it wasn’t all that bad.” — Maral Ustenova, first-year student at the Institute of Reincarnation.
But what if there are no childhood memories at all, which means there is nothing to remember?
The absence of memories can also signal that it is necessary to work with it. What happened in childhood that the brain chose to hide all this in the most distant memory archive?
The surprising thing is that our subconscious does not forget anything and takes the entire experience as a template for developed actions. To change this pattern, which does not suit our present life at all, we need to remember what was laid down earlier and change this program.
For those who cannot easily recall childhood moments, the Institute of Reincarnation provides excellent techniques and tools to not only raise the layer of childhood memories, but also work them in the right direction.
“The lesson turned out to be very interesting for me. Quite unexpectedly, memories surfaced that I didn’t expect. I always said that I don’t remember my childhood well. It turned out that I remember something!!!” — Natalya Demirova, first-year student at the Institute of Reincarnation.
“I am absolutely not a sporty person, I love passive recreation, imagine my surprise when I remembered that throughout my childhood, right up to the 9th grade, I was engaged in tourism! I didn't remember anything! The memories were fuzzy, at the level of awareness, without pictures, in short-term flashes.
There was also volleyball, sports shooting, skiing! I wasn't an athlete, but I did it all! Why was everything erased from memory?” — Elena Kulachkova, first-year student at the Institute of Reincarnation.
Source of unconditional love
Fortunately, not everyone associates childhood with resentment and pain. For most people, childhood is a source of unconditional love that is always a pleasure to return to.
It is very important to find resource moments in your childhood memories and take from them the necessary feelings and sensations. This will help you cope with all the tasks and challenges that life puts before you.
What does this mean - the “resources” of our childhood? For most parents, a child is a gift given to them from above, so they try to protect their child from all worldly problems, surrounding them with their love and care.
It is enough to remember the touch of mother’s hands or feel her aroma, which the baby easily remembers. Such sensations remain in the memory for a long time, and if you wish, you can restore them, feel them, return to childhood and feel like the most beloved creature in the world.
Perhaps you like to remember your favorite bedtime story and your mother's kiss before bed? Or maybe your resource lies in children's games, friendships, relationships with parents, grandparents? Where there are no restrictions and conventions of adult life, where you are loved and understood simply because you exist.
When you are sad and have a feeling of loneliness, lack of love, you can always return to these memories and recharge yourself with this wonderful feeling. It doesn’t require you to give back, because that’s what unconditional love is for. We can find such vital resources exclusively in our childhood.
“I remembered my grandmother, the memories were from the body and visual, there were fewer emotions, I didn’t prepare anything, because... I was completely involved in what was happening, and some kind of wave of kindness and love from childhood washed over me.
Thanks to the respondent, this was a good example for beginners - openness and willingness to interact... the atmosphere was friendly and inviting.” — Irina Kemelman, first-year student at the Institute of Reincarnation.
“Now I understand what it means to be “immersed”—to be completely in that moment, in that memory. I “grabbed” from childhood a good resource of self-confidence, being in the flow, excitement, the feeling of “I can,” confidence that everything will work out for me. I changed my inner state, and reality is transformed. ” — Olga Titova, first-year student at the Institute of Reincarnation.
Bring back the feeling of an explorer
A bonus to life experience is always the habit of analyzing every step before taking it. On the one hand, this is correct, because we protect ourselves from unnecessary actions, thereby trying to avoid mistakes. But if you look at all this from the opposite side, you can see that sometimes you need to decide on rash actions that at first may seem wrong to you.
Here we can give an example with electronic mailboxes. Very often, necessary letters are sent to spam, and perhaps among them there is a letter with unique knowledge, but you will never know this, because you never read it. This is how we analyze our steps, and often do not dare to do something that our brain sends to the spam folder.
Remember yourself as a child , because you were not such “masters of analysis,” I’m sure that you also did something as a child that you definitely wouldn’t dare to do now. You learned about the world, sometimes made mistakes, while discovering something new for yourself.
So, maybe we shouldn’t try to analyze and think through absolutely everything? Turn on the fearless explorer in you, and let your life experience become a reliable assistant for you, and not a source of obstacles.
“I remember, kindergarten, winter, I’m approaching six years old. The desire to lick the iron, to experience for yourself how it happens. I tried it, my tongue stuck, the nanny runs with a jug of warm water. Now I know for sure that you can’t do that. My tongue hurts, but that’s normal, this is research for me.” — Natalya Myasnikova, first-year student at the Institute of Reincarnation.
Feel like a winner
How often do you feel like a winner? Often, sometimes or never? Then you should definitely return to childhood. It will definitely remind you of those “sweet” moments of victory that you performed almost every day and have already forgotten.
After all, childhood is filled with moments of victory, and first of all, over oneself. This is the first word spoken, the first step, 
correctly tying your shoelaces, riding a bicycle for the first time on your own, learning to float without the help of adults - this also happens for the first time.
Then comes kindergarten, school, where the spirit of competition is always present. In every lesson, with every solved example, a feeling of victory always comes.
If not study, then sports is a must; who didn’t love exciting games and relay races as a child!? Perhaps someone went to competitions and became a winner.
When you feel like you can’t do anything, you can always remember your childhood victories, let them become motivation and faith for you that everything will work out for you. If at a very early age we were afraid to take the first step, to say the first word, who would we be now?
“...I remembered how I myself learned to swim in the river, I remembered how I gave myself the task of staying on the water, swimming 1, 3, 5 meters... And I remembered the feeling of satisfaction and pride in the result obtained - I learned to swim!” — Natalya Dzhumailo, first-year student at the Institute of Reincarnation.
Reincarnation to help
The Institute of Reincarnation helps each person restore their memory, find an important resource state and solve the request or task with which you came to this space.
“The most important feature of Reincarnationism is, of course, not past lives, but the space between lives”, - Māris Dreshmanis.
This is the very space that determines the tasks of our current reality. It is from there that you can get valuable answers to all your questions. There you can find out your true self and choose your path for this.
But the first steps in Reincarnationism begin precisely with childhood memories. This is the very springboard from which it all begins. Without this stage, complete a journey through your soul's memory it will be difficult.
With the help of Reincarnation, you can solve your problems, get answers to questions, learn to trust yourself and independently, without outside help, extract the most valuable information from your subconscious.
And the first place your journey into the World of Memories begins is childhood.
We all come from childhood... It’s hardly possible to come up with a more precise phrase than this! We left there, not yet knowing where fate would lead us, what trials life was preparing. And maybe that’s why we walked into it boldly, with our heads held high, confident that we could handle all the great and important things. Naive, funny.
We wanted to seem like adults, not yet realizing that the best and brightest was already behind us!
Childhood cannot be compared with youth or youth. They also have their charms, but childhood is different in that...
Childhood. There is so much in this word that is bright, good, kind and truly sincere.
After all, only when we are small do we love and be friends sincerely. We don’t try to use each other for any of our own purposes; we don’t need anything other than friendship. The concept of “using” will come later when we grow up.
He and she were in the same group in kindergarten. Then life brought them together at school, in the second grade. They were friends. We went to school together, walked outside, played with a ball, visited each other for days...
There are moments in life when you want to return to the past, go somewhere far away, to the land of childhood - the land of lived moments; a country of crazy, carefree, sometimes not very fun life; a country where you have already been and are still drawn there... But all these are dreams, or they have not yet invented a time machine, or a reverse process in metabolism, which, although it would not return there, would make our body forever young. Almost all teenagers and children strive to grow up quickly, not understanding what they have in their...
1 - Don't pay attention to anyone - RUN!
- And the ball?! - But what does the ball have to do with it - the main goal! The ball itself will stick to your feet...
2 ...if you want a girl to like you, smile mysteriously from afar and run away... if she chases you, it’s YOURS!
3 ...if you sneak to the toilet at the end of a movie show, you can watch the next one
4...if you drink a lot of water, you won’t want to eat
5...if they scold you for a long time for studying, you have to flinch and shake yourself off like a dog - then they understand that it’s unpleasant for you!
Each of us had favorite books in childhood, which we read and reread many times, whose characters we lived with and they remained in our memory for the rest of our lives, like people who still live nearby.
I remember how, as a child, I had an irresistible passion for books.
Maybe because I was very timid and shy and lacked communication.
I remember how in the early evening, as soon as the lights went out in the apartment, I went to the window, the windows of which looked out onto a large hotel, where there was a lot of light...
The world of childhood, big and beautiful, we all lived in this world, we all walked through the world of childhood. There is nothing more wonderful and beautiful than that world. In the world of childhood there is eternal carelessness, kindness, the lightness of an airy cloud, naivety and childish spontaneity, carelessness. A happy childhood will never leave the soul and heart of everyone. Probably every person lives with memories of a carefree childhood.
But all children dream and want to be adults and imitate adults. I really want them to be big...
August 17, 1927
My name is Katarina. We live in England, or rather on the very edge of it, in the city of Carlisle. I love my parents very much, because they are the best on the whole planet.
My mother's name is Elizabeth, and my father's name is Christopher. They love each other.
They always help those who come to them for help, be it a person or an animal. Dad and his brother Freud work on grandpa's farm. Grandfather died 20 years ago. I didn't even know him.
And my mother is a nurse at the hospital, I don’t remember her name, but this is...
How quickly time flies... sometimes we only notice it when looking back... far, far into the past. When we remember events that happened a long time ago, but it seems to us that it was just yesterday. And then, as if waking up from a dream, we understand that this cannot be returned, we understand how far time has gone.
I look back and see a child... a girl, and a moment from childhood flashes before my eyes. For some reason I see this picture so clearly, but it was a long time ago...
I look around and understand... old age has come.
Every person probably has some of the most unforgettable memories from their childhood. Undoubtedly, there are not very pleasant memories, but there are also those that will always warm the soul and make you smile. To ensure that your children have as many pleasant childhood memories as possible in the future, you need to act as follows:
Note to moms!
Hello girls) I didn’t think that the problem of stretch marks would affect me too, and I’ll also write about it))) But there’s nowhere to go, so I’m writing here: How did I get rid of stretch marks after childbirth? I will be very glad if my method helps you too...
- Open your child to the world of books. Reading together promotes the development of imagination and thinking, produces pleasant impressions and leaves indelible memories of shared fabulous travels.
- Learn to listen and hear your child. Even asking your child to wait once with a question or request can greatly offend him. There is no need to ask the child to wait a little, answer now, because later it will be too late, it is not relevant. And it’s unlikely that in fifteen minutes you will become freer. It is very typical for modern parents to occupy their child with anything, just so that he does not take up their precious time and does not distract them from work. But they all forget that the child is more important than any other business, that work can wait, and the child grows up deprived of attention and care.
- Hug your children as often as possible. In the strong embrace of his mother, the baby feels all the parental warmth and care. Constant hugs allow him to grow up as a carefree, confident person, and give him a certain sense of security.
- Create your own small family ritual, tradition, which will not only become a pleasant entertainment and pastime, but will also leave an indelible mark on your child’s memory. Then he will be able to tell his children and grandchildren about it.
- Have dinner with the whole family. Due to the crazy pace of modern life, it is quite difficult to get together as a family and have dinner together. But it is very important that at least one meal takes place with the family. This will have a positive effect on the relationship between family members and will bring many pleasant emotions.
- Don't be shy about telling your child how you feel about him. Many parents consider this to be excessive and that such a display of emotions can spoil the baby, but this is not at all true. It is pleasant and important for every person to hear and know that they are loved. This instills a feeling of confidence and increases self-esteem.
- Have holidays. Joint preparations and celebrations will make your life richer and brighter. Celebrate your child's small successes and big achievements, give him a holiday. This will stimulate him to new achievements. Don't forget to support him in all his endeavors.
- Play with your children. It’s rare to see a mother kicking a ball or making porridge out of sand with her child. And children need adults to share their interests. If you're bored of playing with dolls or pushing cars, come up with an activity that will be fun for everyone in the family. It's so nice to have fun together! It will bring family members together, bring a lot of fun and make you feel like a child again. So naive, carefree and sincere.
- Keep what you promise. Many parents often make promises, but do not keep their promises. This greatly hurts the child and he stops trusting them, which leads to him starting to lie. It is also unforgivable to forget memorable and important dates in a child’s life. For example, a birthday or New Year's party. Believe me, if you missed an important day or event due to your busy schedule, it can seriously hurt your child.
- Love your children. Not only in words, but also in deeds. Show them how dear they are to you, how important they are to you, and your child will be incredibly happy.
Only parents can influence the future of their children and to make it happy, give their children love, care, affection, talk to them. While they are little, they need you. And it depends only on you how vivid your children’s childhood memories will be!
We also read:
- I found a surprisingly simple instruction for parents on the Internet. It is a pity that such an education system for children of any age does not “work” in every family -;
- Parental fatigue, views on upbringing, and sometimes the child’s behavior lead to the fact that mom or dad often get annoyed with the child, break into a scream, get angry -;
- Raising your voice to a child is often taken for granted: is there any other way to force him to obey and recognize parental authority? - ;
- Any parent dreams of raising their child well. What do you personally put into this “good”? Are your parenting methods correct? - ;
- Situations when parents lose their nerve are mostly typical. Let's try to figure out why we lash out at our children and how to avoid it. —
- Your child has grown up, and sometimes behaves so badly that he begins to drive you out of patience. It seems to you that he clearly knows what your most vulnerable pain points are in your soul, and he deliberately presses on them, simply out of harm. —
Unfortunately, not everyone wants to remember their childhood. Often it is filled with fears, traumas, a feeling of uselessness, lack of love, care and attention.
Well, who of their own free will will agree to stir up something that they have so diligently hidden for many years and that they definitely don’t want to return to?
This question arises for those who seek to learn to remember their past lives, because before moving directly to them, they need to complete the basic course of the Institute of Reincarnation, where students work with memories of early childhood for a whole month.
And resistance often arises:
“I have no happy memories as a child, I have nothing to see there!”
“There is too much pain and tears in my childhood, why would I plunge into it? I don’t want to experience this again!”
“I don’t remember my childhood before 5 years old. I don’t remember and that’s all!”
And here the most important thing is to decide for yourself: are you ready to change something in yourself and your life? or will you continue to bury your head in the sand and refuse the treasures that you possess, in addition to injuries, grievances and claims?
And everyone has treasures! Trust the vast experience of the teachers of the Institute of Reincarnation, through whom hundreds of students and clients who are afraid and resist have already passed.
And only a trusting and friendly atmosphere in the space of the “school of wizards,” as we affectionately call our Institute, allows you, sooner or later, to open up and remember how many wonderful moments there were in your childhood, even if initially it seemed to you like seven circles of hell.
I want to lift the veil just a little and show what can be found even in the most joyless childhood.
Favorite toy
Surely each of you had your favorite toy! It could be a beautiful doll saying “Mom!” and languidly batting her blue eyes. Or a soft teddy bear, with whom it was cozy and not scary to fall asleep, hugging him and burying his nose in his furry cheek.
Or maybe it’s a doll sewn from scraps and old threads, inconspicuous and shabby, or a rough wooden figurine planed by someone’s hands, but there was nothing cuter in the world!!!
It could not even be a children's toy at all, but an ordinary object: a spoon, a saucepan lid, a hook or a bead. But you still remember how you squeezed it in your palm and what you felt at the same time!
It doesn't matter what the toy was. What matters is what was she to you baby and how you felt again and again, holding her in your arms, rocking her and talking to her, trusting all your joys and sorrows.
Furry friend
You were absolutely lucky if you had a real Friend- a pet that you played with, walked with, or simply looked after or watched.
Who was it? Faithful and devoted dog? A funny, mischievous kitten whose antics you can remember endlessly? Or a wounded pigeon that you dragged from the street, saving the bird’s life despite the protests and misunderstanding of adults? Or maybe a cute hamster stuffing his cheeks so funny?
Pigeons have built a nest on our balcony. Grandmother swore terribly and insisted on throwing out the unclean birds. How fiercely I defended the ugly blue creatures without feathers with huge crooked beaks!
And how sweet was the feeling of victory and saved lives when my persistence overpowered my grandmother’s severity!
I also adored horses since childhood. And I had my own horse! I rode it across the fields at full speed. He clattered his hooves beautifully and gracefully. Our days were full of travel and adventure around the village where I grew up.
And it’s okay that my horse was imaginary. For me he was the most real!
Soul meetings
Memories of people who gave us affection, care, attention.
Maybe someone from the family was especially close to you, with whom you felt a strong family connection, who would always understand, caress and caress you, treat you to something tasty, or simply smile tenderly, winking conspiratorially.
Maybe this is a doctor in a clinic who could calm you down and overcome your fear? Or the janitor Uncle Vasya, with whom you had a special greeting ritual! Or a grandmother on a bench who always has candy and a kind word?
And it doesn’t matter at all whether you saw each other often or whether it was just one meeting, the warmth of which, when remembered, warms your child’s heart even now.
Hidden places
Some of you may find special places in your treasure trove of childhood memories. The kind in which you felt unusual, which seemed magical and amazing, even if only for you.
What is this? A dacha where you vacationed in the summer with your family or your grandmother’s yard? A huge children's store full of toys and everything you can dream of?
Or maybe the library with its silence and the smell of books that contained so many interesting and unknown things?
Or a small cave on the seashore, where you could hardly squeeze through, but in which you felt like Robinson? What else: a stream, a quiet corner in the yard, a treehouse or an old attic?
Allow yourself travel again to your childhood places!
A dream come true
You can also look for moments when your biggest dream came true! Something you have desired passionately, perhaps for a long time. And this is the very moment when you finally found what you wanted!
What was it? Puppy or kitten? A trip to the park for amusement rides? Or maybe a sister or brother? First encounter with a strange animal at the zoo? First acquaintance with the sea?
It’s an incredible feeling when you remember such a moment and feel that the Universe hears you, it fulfills your wishes.
Everything is possible and everything is real!
You can dive into this state more often to fill yourself with its resources and easily fulfill your dreams at your current age.
Just try it!
Treasure Chest
These are not all the treasures that can be found in the childhood of each of you! I only reminded you of a few points. And in the next article we will continue our journey through the nooks and crannies of childhood.
Now imagine that your childhood is an old dark chest in which there is everything: scary and painful, as well as funny and joyful.
And when you remember another pleasant, happy or joyful moment, you light a firefly in your palms. Place a new firefly in your old chest each time.
Thus, gradually it will be filled with light more and more. And where there is a lot of light, there is no longer room for darkness. That's how it happens childhood healing.
You can try it right now!
- Create an intention for a week to remember at least one joyful moment or significant detail from your childhood every day.
- Savor this memory, feed on it and put your “firefly” in the chest!
And at the end of the week, look back and compare, Has your attitude towards childhood changed? Remember what happened to you during this week? You will be surprised how much around you will change. But the main thing is how much brighter it will become inside!
I suggest sharing your “fireflies” in the comments and thus helping each other pull out more and more new memories and be filled with light and love!
Ecology of life. Psychology: The problem of childhood memories has been worrying scientists for many years, and the latest research by psychologists and neurophysiologists can clarify a lot in these issues...
Where do childhood memories go? Why is our brain able to forget? Can you trust fragments of memory?
The problem of childhood memories has been worrying scientists for many years, and recent research by psychologists and neurophysiologists can clarify a lot in these issues.
My memories are like gold in a purse given by the devil:
you open it, and there are dry leaves.
Jean-Paul Sartre
©Elena Shumilova
Childhood. River. Shimmering water. White sand. Dad teaches me to swim.
Or here’s another: treasures. You will collect all sorts of junk such as beads, colored glass, candy wrappers and chewing gum, dig a small hole in the ground, throw your treasures there, press it all down with previously found glass from a bottle and cover it with earthen soil. No one ever found them later, but we loved making these treasure chests.
My memory from kindergarten is reduced to these individual moments: drawing with my finger on the foggy glass of a window, my brother’s plaid shirt, a dark winter street dotted with red lights, electric cars in the children’s park.
When we try to remember our life before the moment of birth, we only see such glimpses in the memory closet, despite the fact that we thought about something then, felt something and learned a lot about the world in those days.
Where did all those childhood memories, those years go?
The problem of childhood memories and inevitable forgetting fits into a simple definition by psychologists - “childhood amnesia.” On average, people's memories reach the age when they were 3-3.5 years old, and everything that happened before that becomes a dark abyss. Leading expert on memory development from Emory University, Dr. Patricia Bauer, notes:
This phenomenon demands our attention because it contains a paradox: many children perfectly remember the events of their lives, but as adults, they retain a small part of their memories.
In the last few years, scientists have been particularly focused on this question and seem to have managed to unravel what happens in the brain when we lose memories of our earliest years.
And it all started with Freud, who back in 1899 coined the term “infantile amnesia” for the described phenomenon. He argued that adults forgot their early years of life in the process of suppressing disturbing sexual memories. While some psychologists supported this claim, the most commonly accepted explanation for childhood amnesia was that children were simply unable to form lasting memories before the age of seven, although there was negligible evidence to support this theory. For nearly a hundred years, psychologists have theorized that childhood memories fail to survive primarily because they fail to last.
The end of the 1980s marked the beginning of reformation in the field of child psychology. Bauer and other psychologists began to study children's memory using a very simple method: they built a very simple toy in front of the child's eyes and broke it after a signal, and then observed whether the child could imitate the actions of an adult in the correct order, but in an extended time range: from several minutes up to several months.
One experiment after another showed:
- memories of children 3 years old and younger are actually preserved, although with limitations;
- at 6 months of age babies remember at least the previous day;
- at 9 months events are stored in memory for at least 4 weeks;
- at the age of two- during a year.
And in a landmark 1991 study, scientists found that four and a half year old child could remember in detail a trip to Disney World that took place 18 months earlier.
However about 6 years old children begin to forget many of these early memories. Another experiment in 2005, conducted by Dr. Bauer and her colleagues, showed that children aged five and a half years recalled more than 80% of the experiences they had before the age of 3, while children who were seven and a half years old could remember less than 40% of their childhood experiences.
This work exposed the contradictions that lie at the very core of “infantile amnesia”: Young children are able to remember events in the first few years of life, but most of these memories eventually fade at a rapid rate, unlike the forgetting mechanisms of adults.
Puzzled by this contradiction, researchers began to speculate: perhaps, for long-lasting memories, we must master speech or self-awareness - in general, acquire something that is not very developed in childhood. But while oral communication and self-awareness undoubtedly strengthen human memory, their absence cannot fully explain the phenomenon of childhood amnesia. After all, some animals that have fairly large brains relative to their bodies but lack language and our level of self-awareness also lose memories that date back to their infancy (eg rats and mice).
The guesses lasted until scientists paid attention to the most important organ involved in the memory process - our brain. From that moment on, the problem of childhood memories became the subject of attention of neuroscientists around the world, and one after another, studies began to appear explaining the reason for the disappearance of our memory.
The fact is that Between birth and adolescence, brain structures continue to develop. With a massive wave of growth, the brain acquires a huge number of neural connections, which are reduced with age (at a certain stage, we simply need this “neural boom” - in order to quickly adapt to our world and learn the most necessary things; this does not happen to us anymore).
So, as Bauer found out, This specific brain adaptability comes at a price. While the brain undergoes prolonged development outside the womb after birth, the large and complex network of brain neurons that create and maintain our memories is itself under construction, so it is not able to form memories in the same way as the adult brain does. . As a result, the long-term memories formed in the early years of our lives are the least stable of all the ones we form during our lives and tend to disintegrate as we grow older.
And a year ago, Toronto Children's Hospital neurologist Paul Frankland and his colleagues published a study, “Hippocampal neurogenesis regulates forgetting in infancy and adulthood,” demonstrating another cause of childhood amnesia. According to scientists, memories not only deteriorate, but also become hidden. A few years ago, Frankland and his wife, who is also a neuroscientist, began noticing that the mice they were studying were worse on certain types of memory tests after living in a cage with a wheel. Scientists have linked this to the fact that wheel running promotes neurogenesis - the process of the appearance and growth of whole new neurons in the hippocampus, an area of the brain that is important for memory. But while adult hippocampal neurogenesis likely contributes to learning and memory, it may be related to the process of forgetting as the organism grows. Just as a forest can only grow so many trees, the hippocampus can only accommodate a limited number of neurons. As a result, what happens all the time in our lives: new brain cells displace other neurons from their territory or even sometimes replace them altogether, which in turn leads to a restructuring of mental circuits that can store individual memories. Scientists suggest that especially high levels of neurogenesis in infancy are partly responsible for childhood amnesia.
In addition to experiments with the running wheel, scientists used Prozac, which stimulates the growth of nerve cells. Mice that were given the drug began to forget the experiments that had been performed on them before, while the mice that did not receive the drug remembered everything and were well oriented in familiar conditions. On the contrary, when researchers interfered with the neurogenesis of small animals using genetic engineering, the young animals began to form much more stable memories.
True, Frankland and Joseline went even further: they decided to carefully study how neurogenesis changes the structure of the brain and what happens to old cells. Their latest experiment is worthy of the wildest guesses of science fiction writers: with the help of a virus, scientists inserted a gene into DNA that is capable of encoding a protein for a fluorescent glow. As the luminous dyes showed, new cells do not replace old ones - rather, they join an already existing circuit.
This rewiring of memory circuits means that while some of our childhood memories actually fade away, others remain in an encrypted, refracted form. Apparently, this explains the difficulty with which we are sometimes given to remember something.
But even if we manage to unravel the tangles of several different memories, we will never be able to fully trust the resurrected paintings - some of them may be partially or completely fabricated. This is supported by research by Elizabeth Loftus of the University of California, Irvine, which revealed that our earliest memories are insoluble mixtures of real memories, stories we have absorbed from others, and imaginary scenes created by the subconscious.
As part of the experiment, Loftus and her colleagues presented volunteers with several short stories about their childhood, told by relatives. Unbeknownst to the study participants, the researchers included one made-up story that was, in fact, fiction - about getting lost at the age of five in a shopping mall. However, a quarter of volunteers said they remembered it. And even when they were told that one of the stories was made up, some participants were unable to determine that it was a story about a shopping mall.
Science journalist and deputy editor-in-chief of Scientific American Ferris Jabr reflects on this matter:
When I was little, I got lost in Disneyland. Here's what I remember: it was December, and I watched the iron train pass through the Christmas village. When I turned around, my parents had disappeared. A cold sweat ran through my body. I started sobbing and wandering around the park looking for mom and dad. A stranger approached me and led me to giant buildings filled with TV screens broadcasting the park's security cameras. Did I see my parents on one of these screens? No. We returned to the train where we found them. I ran to them with joy and relief.
Recently, for the first time in a long time, I asked my mom what she remembered about that day at Disneyland. She says it was spring or summer and that she last saw me near the remote control of the Jungle Cruise boats, not near the railroad. Once they realized I was lost, they went straight to the lost and found center. The park ranger actually found me and brought me to this center, where my parents found me, contentedly eating ice cream. Of course, no evidence of her or my memories could be found, but we were left with something much more elusive: these little embers of the past, embedded in our consciousness, flickering like fool's gold.
Also interesting: How our brain clears memory
Yes, we lose our childhood memories in order to be able to grow and develop further. But, to be honest, I don’t see that as a big problem. We always take the most precious, most important things with us into adulthood: the smell of my mother’s perfume, the feeling of the warmth of her hands, my father’s self-confident smile, a sparkling river and the magical feeling of a new day - all those treasures of childhood that remain with us until the end. published
