Why the Human Brain Cannot Easily Retrieve Memories Before Age Four

Kai Psychology explained the concept of infantile amnesia, the inability of the adult brain to retrieve memories before age four. This is mostly due to neurogenesis, the birth of new neurons in the hippocampus, the center where memories are stored.

You cried, fell in love with a voice, felt grass for the first time — and none of it survived. Your brain didn’t lose those first three years. It erased them on purpose…

When children are young, these neurons are still forming, so the structures needed to keep these memories intact are not yet in place, and new memories will override old ones.

Now, hold that up against what’s happening in a human toddler’s hippocampus. It is one of the fastest periods of neurogenesis a human brain will ever experience. …That flood is at the same time bulldozing the memory circuits laid downjust months before. The brain isn’t failing to save your first three years. It’s spending them, burning them as raw material to build the very architecture your later self will use to remember everything that comes after.