My Search for Ice Cream and How it Became a Lasting Memory

            My first memory is from when I was five years old. It is a pretty emotional memory, so I guess that’s why I still remember it. My mom and I were in the supermarket, and I was pretty upset with her for her lack of interest in the ice cream aisle. So I took the initiative and wandered off to go find it myself. Of course, the inevitable happened and I ended up losing my mom, and it wasn’t until one of the kind supermarket workers returned a very shaken up (and still ice cream-less) me to my mother that we were reunited.

            Since my first memory is from when I was five years old, I’ve always assumed we just don’t form memories before around that age. This was the prevailing view of society too until about the 1980s, at which point it was proven that even very young children do indeed have the capability to form memories. Until more recently, it was believed that these memories were only transient, with young children living only in the present. However that idea has been overturned as well.

            It turns out that very young children remember a lot like adults. In early infancy, the neural structures crucial for memory are coming online: the hippocampus, which is, very roughly, in charge of storing new memories; and the prefrontal cortex, which is, very roughly, in charge of retrieving those memories. But the difference between children and adults is that in children those neural pathways are still developing, so only part of the information is stored. Only part of the present is captured in young children as it goes by.

            Over time, children remember things for longer and longer; their memories are getting stickier so to say. That being said, we still can generally not remember anything before roughly the age of 4 or 5. So at what point do memories start becoming more permanent? New research indicates that this might have to do with society as much as neurology. Parents repeat and retell events to their children, and these events get cemented as more permanent memories. So here’s my question: Is the only reason I remember my excursion to get ice cream that my mom likes to retell the story of me making a fool of myself in search of sweets? If so, I still have no regrets. I just like ice cream a lot.