What happened at the 7-year-old time node, which made the brain process childhood memories and delete most of them? Is this a self-protection mechanism or an upgrade of human brain storage capacity?
The brain is a magical creation of nature with unlimited potential. People's brain nerve cells and synapses are renewed all their lives, and the peak is in the infancy of about one year old. During this period, the brain will establish synaptic connections very quickly, reach the peak of human life under the influence of genes and environment, and then after a long period of pruning, it will basically be fixed in adolescence or even youth, when the development of the brain has ended.
The brain begins with childhood memories. To be sure, this behavior is an upgrade of the brain's storage capacity. Unused synaptic connections are equivalent to memory garbage and need to be cleaned up slowly.
We know that the establishment of synapse is closely related to the learning and memory function of human brain. People without memories are no different from walking dead. It is very risky for the brain to completely delete childhood memories. How is this process realized? Amnesia in children is a harmless disease that is popular in all mankind, and there are many interpretations.
From the perspective of subtracting synaptic connections, from the age of 7 to 9, the brain quickly erases childhood memories. This shows that new memories have settled down, and while removing children's survival memories, they can still support children's normal lives without confusion.
As for why there are so many synaptic connections in childhood, it is because newborns need to learn to adapt to the world quickly, and the information collected by the five senses will be stored. The memory at this time is primitive and chaotic. By the age of 6, children's brain weight has basically developed to the same level as that of adults, and after all functional brain regions have basically grown up, the original chaotic memories will be regularly archived and re-stored in new brain regions, which will gradually lose a lot of useless memories.
Because the sensory perception in early childhood has just begun to develop, the information obtained is not high in quality but large in quantity, which is basically stored in the form of short-term memory, which makes these childhood memories easily forgotten.
Eliminate blurred visual information
Among these useless information, visual information accounts for a large proportion. People get information from the natural environment through sensory perception, and vision accounts for 80%, so does childhood. Newborns' visual adaptability is extremely rapid. Babies around half a year old can already recognize colors and objects very well. By the age of four, children's visual ability has developed as well as that of adults.
The fuzzy visual memory in early childhood will soon be eliminated, and the iteration will be updated quickly in the process of visual development and maturity, so many children can hardly remember what happened when they were young. However, they have deep memories of familiar smells, sounds and tactile sensations, such as the feeling of sucking nipples and the sound of their mother putting them to sleep.
The formation of language system will aggravate forgetting.
Memory is like a set of photos or video files stored in your mind. They will be labeled with keywords, and when you need to wake up that memory, you will search in the memory through keywords. Language can make people form concepts and play a positive role in memory retrieval.
And children can only refer to all kinds of things "eyah" before they have formed their language ability. Their language will learn from their parents and gradually replace the original "baby language". At this point, the original memory keywords will be replaced by more accurate language vocabulary, thus increasing the difficulty of memory awakening and causing forgetting.
After learning a language, almost all the memories will be recoded and stored, and the original memories will either disappear slowly or be rewritten and replaced.
Differences between China and the West
Cross-cultural research shows that the attitude of western families towards children is more continuous, parents tend to think that children are complete and independent from birth, and they demand responsibility for their children earlier; The attitude of oriental families towards children will change greatly at the age of 6 or 7, and only at this age will children be required to take responsibility and demand independence. At home, I often hear a saying about educating children: "You have grown up, so you should ...". This sudden change makes it easier for children to abandon their naive self (memory) in the process of adulthood.
Although human beings generally forget childhood memories (before the age of 3), deeper memories will remain before the age of 7. This part of the memory that most people keep has one characteristic. When recalling, it is always the third person, the observer's point of view.
The main reason for this situation is that there is no strong self-awareness in early childhood. In fact, this memory was later guided by family account, and it was made up the day after tomorrow, so it was mostly from the observer's perspective. You can feel that the person in this memory is you, but you can't recall more details about your childhood. This strange and familiar feeling is wonderful.
There is a very common example about the formation of children's self-awareness, "I in the mirror". A one-year-old child looks at himself in the mirror. He can't know that the reflection in the mirror is himself. He will think that it is a fresh stranger. Children can understand the concept of "me in the mirror" when they are 3 or 4 years old.
Deleting childhood memories before the age of 3 is a necessary process for the normal development of the human brain. It is normal that almost everyone will be affected by children's amnesia. Scientists' research on this process can provide some corresponding enlightenment for children's development and early education.
For example, in the process of cutting off useless nerve connections, children can be provided with some sensory training in the early stage, similar to music melody, color perception, sports ability, etc., to remind the brain that these are nerve connections that need to be preserved in the future and tap the potential of children.
The discontinuous educational background of China families can also be optimized. Many times, it is counterproductive to rush to make children independent. It is true that children want to accept responsibility and be independent as soon as possible, but the process must not be anxious, and there must be a transition and guidance.
Just asking for instructions without guidance is like the boss of the company only wants results, and the employees are messing around. If employees don't have that high ability, the results will not come out at all.
Why some children who have experienced great changes in their families don't have a healthy mind is because there is no time and space for them to become adults. They will grow up under great pressure from an early age, and it is easy to go astray.
Conclusion: Almost everyone will be affected by childhood amnesia. Can you recall something from your childhood? What impressed you the most?