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Why Can’t We Remember the First Few Years of Life?
Study Finds ^ | March 21, 2025 | Staff

Posted on 03/21/2025 12:27:09 PM PDT by Red Badger

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To: Jane Long
EXACTLY!

I have that kind of memory ( no, not earlier than when I was 3, though ) and when I talk or think about something, I DO see it, like a movie, in my mind.

I used to have a photographic memory ( seeing read pages in a book and being able to reread the print ), but that ability has faded some by now, though I still CAN pull up some long ago pages still and read them in my mind's eye.

41 posted on 03/21/2025 1:08:08 PM PDT by nopardons
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To: Responsibility2nd

I was 10 months old when Kennedy was killed. I distinctly recall being in the living room, my mother ironing, and the television was on and my mother started crying. I can see the images on the TV screen. 10 months old. I suspect my Mother’s reaction left an imprint.

After that the next earliest memory was potty training...


42 posted on 03/21/2025 1:09:29 PM PDT by EBH (It is always darkest before the dawn. Government betrayed the Republic.)
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To: JayGalt

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin was/is a serious question.

The medieval theologians were debating whether angels and demons could have a real presence in our world despite the fact that we can’t see, hear or feel them. At a slightly higher level of abstraction, one could ask if they exist in a dimension beyond the spatial dimensions and time that we perceive. Can you think of a better shorthand way to visualize the problem so that it can be sensibly discussed in a world that lacked modern mathematics and theoretical physics?

The snarky debunkers stepped in when the Age of Cynicism dawned, and for several centuries “sophisticated” thinkers sat around and mocked the stupid monks.

Then came Einstein and the succeeding avalanche of theoretical physicists. Do matter and energy exist and interact in dimensions beyond those our very limited sensory apparatus can perceive. Well, yes.

How many theoretical physics models do you try to keep up with? How many dimensions do the researchers now project mathematically? How many produce effects that we can now manage to measure given extremely sophisticated (and expensive) research contraptions? Is string theory still thought to be a viable possibility, and how many dimensions do the best current models project?

The medieval monks who were trying to visualize the problem didn’t have advanced mathematics. Heck, they didn’t even understand that the electromagnetic spectrum extends into frequencies far beyond what we can detect. They had the problem of invisible angels and demons, and research tools limited to what they could see with the unaided eye in the rec room of the monastery. Is the Bible wrong? Must all references to angels and demons be understood metaphorically? Or perhaps there is more to the real world around us than we can perceive. Maybe they weren’t so stupid after all.


43 posted on 03/21/2025 1:10:39 PM PDT by sphinx
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To: Fester Chugabrew

I remember my little just born brother coming home from hospital..was prob on my 3rd birthday. Course, my Dad just got out of jail for drunk driving, too.


44 posted on 03/21/2025 1:11:25 PM PDT by goodnesswins (Democracy to Democrats is stealing other peoples money for their use, no matter how idiotic)
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To: LittleBillyInfidel

Can’t remember breakfast this morning..........


45 posted on 03/21/2025 1:17:03 PM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
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To: Red Badger

Why Can’t We Remember the First Few Years of Life?

You do when your near the end of life your in bed toothless bald waiting for somebody to feed you and change your diaper.

Somethings not worth remembering.


46 posted on 03/21/2025 1:19:37 PM PDT by Vaduz
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To: arthurus

Five months old, with a clear and sharp memory, remarkable!

I don’t know what my age was then, but I can recall not being able to talk, and being feed something (water?) from a bottle.
I recall the water spilling out of my mouth, onto my t-shirt, not being able to do anything about it.

I recall a train trip I went on with my Mother.
I recall her perfume. Much later, I learned she was wearing the scent called ‘Persian Wool’ from Avon.


47 posted on 03/21/2025 1:25:24 PM PDT by lee martell
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To: Red Badger

Sometimes there are baby memories that stick with us for whatever reason. Even if we can’t recall every detail of them.


48 posted on 03/21/2025 1:28:40 PM PDT by Revel
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To: roving
Me too, pretty vividly.

Blows my family away because they were there too and their memory gets jogged.

49 posted on 03/21/2025 1:32:02 PM PDT by Manic_Episode (Harpazo imminent. Each post may be my last. It's been real =)
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To: Manic_Episode

I was 4 years and 2 1/2 months when Kennedy was killed. I remember Romper Room not being on and lots of talking going on the tv and my parents were upset.


50 posted on 03/21/2025 1:37:14 PM PDT by princess leah ( )
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To: Red Badger

Let’s ask the “memory experts” a simple question: what is the physical basis of memory? Molecules? Electrical phenomena in the brain? And how a human can force himself to recall things from the memory? There aren’t any answers to those questions, as of now….


51 posted on 03/21/2025 1:48:44 PM PDT by exinnj
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To: sphinx

The world has people with different abilities, interests and analytical frames of reference. Mine is very concrete. Neither string theory, angels on pins or free flow theorizing on baby memory formation intrigue me.
In my training there were those that stood in halls & theorized about processes where there was never an answer * there were those who hustled to get things done. The two types never truly respect each other.


52 posted on 03/21/2025 1:51:10 PM PDT by JayGalt (Fight! Fight! Fight!)
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To: Red Badger

Interesting. I can remember things that happened when I was three years old, and a few flashes of earlier times. My wife could not remember before six years old.


53 posted on 03/21/2025 1:51:34 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: Red Badger

Maybe we were too focused on sucking on tits.......


54 posted on 03/21/2025 1:52:46 PM PDT by Hot Tabasco
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To: arthurus

There was an episode of Young Sheldon where his dad was trying to get a recipe from meemaw and she wouldn’t give it up and things got ugly.

To bring peace Sheldon spills the secret. He had overheard the recipe when he was two years old and remembered it verbatum.


55 posted on 03/21/2025 1:55:41 PM PDT by LeoTDB69
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To: roving

Me too.


56 posted on 03/21/2025 1:55:59 PM PDT by Churchillspirit (Pray for President Trump)
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To: Red Badger

I have a very good memory when I was very young. I remember FDR’s speech on December 8, 1941, air-raid drills, when all the lights had to be off and the black window shades pulled all the way down so that no light could be seen from the outside. I was less than 18 months old at the time.


57 posted on 03/21/2025 1:58:53 PM PDT by NY Attitude (Make love not war but be prepared for either.)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

I just pulled up a photo of me and my brother. From his age, born in 1948, I was probably two and a half years old, living in a house near Dalhart TX. I still remembered it was Dalhart.


58 posted on 03/21/2025 1:58:56 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: Red Badger

Did you read all of the last couple of very long postings you made? Just asking.

I can vividly remember certain events back to the time I was about 2 1/2 years old just before and after my sister was born. The memories are like watching a video and are in vivid color. A leaf fort, climbing on some tanks, a very small front end loader at the little power plant behind faculty housing, the day my Dad destroyed the front doorway of our duplex so the ambulance crew could take my Mom to the hospital when she nearly died. I was 2 years and eleven months then. My Grandmother was present helping with the new baby and I was standing in front of her as we watched. The door frame and the porch railings exploded. I remember well climbing the ladder from my bunk bed up on to the kitchen table to see the snow, falling and splitting my chin open and stitches and the hospital where our doctor sewed me up. One wonderful day of sledding at about three, our red and white Pontiac station wagon with its hood ornament, the day my dog died, walking on campus running a stick down an iron fence as we walked, Dad’s new office in the new Engineering Building with this amazing topographic map room and the small teaching reactor across the quad. Just a whole bunch of snippets of images. One of the best ones was Momma bringing in the frozen laundry from the clothes line. Nearly 70 years ago and I can still see her so pretty.

Those are some of my earliest memories. There was nothing before that summer and fall.


59 posted on 03/21/2025 2:03:02 PM PDT by Sequoyah101 (Donald John Trump. First man to be Elected to the Presidency THREE times since FDR.)
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To: lee martell

The best I can do is a few mental pictures of Key West when I was two.


60 posted on 03/21/2025 2:04:52 PM PDT by arthurus (covfefe )
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