This piece from Scientific American discusses new developments in neurological research that aims to answer questions about why we’re unable to remember being infants:

Neuroscientists Paul Frankland and Sheena Josselyn, both at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, do not think linguistics or a sense of self offers a good explanation, either. It so happens that humans are not the only animals that experience infantile amnesia. Mice and monkeys also forget their early childhood. To account for the similarities, Frankland and Josselyn have another theory: the rapid birth of many new neurons in a young brain blocks access to old memories.

In a new experiment, the scientists manipulated the rate at which hippocampal neurons grew in young and adult mice. The hippocampus is the region in the brain that records autobiographical events. The young mice with slowed neuron growth had better long-term memory. Conversely, the older mice with increased rates of neuron formation had memory loss.

Read more.