What’s your earliest memory?

It has always struck me as curious that no one remembers anything from when they were really young. I have vivid memories from when I was six years old on, but only a handful from before that, most tied to strong emotions or discomfort, or (strangely enough) the layouts of the buildings and the neighborhoods I spent a lot of time in… I can still mentally walk through my grandmother’s house and garden, and the fascinating dusty old dirt-floored garage/shed behind their house. And while I may not recall the furnishings, I could draw you a fairly accurate plan of all three floors of the house, the land it sat on, and the streets immediately surrounding it.

But the thing that prompted these musings is a study some Canadian scientists have done recently, suggesting that while adults rarely remember anything from before age three or four, young kids have verifiable memories as far back as when they were eighteen months old. Even more curious, when they were brought back a couple years later, they couldn’t recall those memories even when prompted.

In a very real way, we are our memories, and it will be very interesting to see what else science can figure out about how the memory system works.

(The URL is from the lyrics of the Statler Brothers’ song “Do Your Remember These,” which is almost as old as I am.)