本集内容

Are baby memories real?

我们真的有婴儿时期的记忆吗？

文字稿

Do you have any memories from when you were a baby?

你还记得你小时候的事情吗？

If so, they might not be real.

如果你记得的话，这些记忆可能并不是真实的。

Scientists think we can't remember events from the first few years of our lives – it's called infantile amnesia. But why?

科学家认为我们并不能记住人生最初的几年里发生的事，这种现象被称为 “幼年健忘”。但这是为什么呢？

Some believe babies don't make memories, maybe because their brains aren't yet fully developed.

有些人认为婴儿不会产生记忆，这也许是因为婴儿的大脑还没有发育完全。

But new research is starting to question that idea.

但新的研究开始质疑这一观点。

（Source: Science Journal）
A study on 26 babies in the US this year found that from about one year of age some babies appeared to remember pictures they'd seen before.

（来源：《科学》期刊）
今年，美国一项对 26 名婴儿展开的研究发现，一些婴儿从一岁左右开始似乎就能够记住他们看过的图片。

And it seemed to involve a brain region called the hippocampus that's known to play a major role in memory.

这个记忆过程似乎利用了一个被称作 “海马体” 的大脑区域，人们已经知道这个区域在记忆中起着重要作用。

So if babies are making memories, where have those memories gone by the time they're older?

那么，如果婴儿会形成记忆，当他们长大之后，这些记忆去了哪里？

（Source: Science Advances Journal）
A study on mice found that those who had learned their way through a maze as infants had forgotten it by the time they were adults.

（来源：《科学进展》期刊）
一项利用老鼠进行的研究发现，那些在婴儿时期学会了怎么走迷宫的老鼠到成年时就忘记了迷宫的走法。

But artificially activating parts of the hippocampus that were involved in the original learning could bring that memory back to life, suggesting it had been there all along.

但通过人工激活海马体中参与了当初学习过程的部分可能能将这些记忆唤醒，这说明这些记忆一直都储存在海马体中。

Now there's no evidence we can reactivate past childhood memories in humans, but wouldn't that be an intriguing idea?

虽然还没有证据表明我们能重新激活人类婴幼儿时期的记忆，但那是不是一个十分有意思的想法呢？