Why Can’t We Remember Being a Baby?

Why can't we remember being a baby? A 2025 Yale brain-scan study found babies about a year old form memories, so where do they go? Infantile amnesia (also called childhood amnesia) is the near-universal blank in our earliest years: most adults can't recall specific events from before about age three or four. This video follows the science step by step, from the classic baby-and-mobile experiment to a 2025 brain-scan study of babies, mice that seemed to forget a memory and then acted on it again, and the theories about why early memories become hard to reach. IN THIS VIDEO What infantile amnesia is, and when most people's first memories begin How Yale researchers scanned the brains of 26 babies and what the hippocampus showed The classic ribbon-and-mobile experiment that showed babies learn and remember How baby mice that seemed to have forgotten a memory acted on it again when scientists reactivated the cells with light Neurogenesis: why a rapidly rebuilding brain is a leading but unproven explanation How language, a sense of self and mirror recognition may shape autobiographical memory What Yale's home-video study of children is testing now CHAPTERS 0:00 Where did your baby memories go? 0:23 Infantile amnesia: the memories you can't remember 1:14 The Yale baby brain scan study (2025) 2:18 Mice, light and a forgotten memory 3:04 Neurogenesis: is a rebuilding brain the cause? 4:07 Language, self and autobiographical memory 5:05 Can scientists track an early memory? The home-video study 6:01 The person in your baby photos SOURCES Yates et al. (2025). Hippocampal encoding of memories in human infants. Science. Yale News (March 20, 2025). Why don't we remember being a baby? New study provides clues. Akers et al. (2014). Hippocampal neurogenesis regulates forgetting during adulthood and infancy. Science 344:598-602. Guskjolen et al. (2018). Current Biology 28:2283. Power et al. (2023). Science Advances. Rovee-Collier et al. (1980). Reactivation of infant memory. Science 208:1159-1161. Nelson & Fivush (2004). The emergence of autobiographical memory: A social cultural developmental theory. Psychological Review 111:486-511. Howe & Courage (1993). On resolving the enigma of infantile amnesia. Psychological Bulletin. MORE FROM THIS CHANNEL What If You Woke Up as the Last Woman on Earth? Your turn: what's the earliest thing you can remember, and how old were you? Tell us in the comments. Subscribe to Mayzie's World of Wild What-If Questions, Science and Imagination for more science mysteries and what-if questions. English captions are available on this video. #InfantileAmnesia #Memory #Neuroscience #BabyBrain #ChildhoodAmnesia