Stuff You Should Know - Can you remember being born?

Episode Date: November 3, 2009

Some people have memories of very early childhood, but how far back can you go? Is it possible to remember your own birth? Josh and Chuck are on the case in this episode of Stuff You Should Know. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Activate it in the Discover app. See terms and learn more at discover.com slash online privacy protection. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. You've heard the rumors before.

Perhaps some whispers written between the lines of the textbooks, conspiracies, paranormal events, all those things that disappear from the official explanations. Tune in and learn more of the stuff that they don't want you to know in this video podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark with me as always is the lovely and esteemed Charles W. Chuckers Bryant. How you doing, buddy? I'm all right, how are you? Slightly under the weather, I see. Tan. Yeah, everyone send out their well wishes. No, thanks.

You'll be well by the time this comes out, though. Probably, but it'll still warm my heart to see well wishes. Yeah, exactly. Chuck, I don't know if you got the email, but we've been asked to mention a couple of shows that are coming out, companion shows, they're coming out on the Science Channel.

The Road to Punkin' Chunkin' and Punkin' Chunkin' itself. Naturally. Yeah, yeah, and that, Josh, is Thanksgiving night if you're bored after your turkey on the Science Channel. Uh-huh, starting at eight Eastern time, right? Yeah. So, can we get back to it? Yeah, let's do it.

Great. Josh. Do you remember coming into that delivery room from the womb with your mom going, ehhhhh, and you all wet and nasty and cold all of a sudden and everything's bright and there's people spanking you and you're suddenly a little perturbed?

I remember being perturbed. That sounds like last Friday night for me. No, I don't remember that. I'm not talking about any goats being around. Okay. I don't remember that. Nor do I. I'm totally full of it.

And apparently no one remembers this. That's true. Being born is impossible as far as we know. As far as we know. Yeah. So, anytime you hear somebody describing how they remember being born, you can punch them in the stomach and call them a liar.

Did people say that? I've heard it before. Yeah. It's rare, but yeah. People do say that they have uncovered that memory. Right, what through primal therapy or are we getting there? You got a little foreshadowing binge going on there? I know, that's literally like the last thing

we're probably gonna cover and I ruined it. Well, let's talk about this, Chuck. Why can't you remember being born? Especially because they think that infants are able to form memories. Right. So why wouldn't we be able to be formed? And what's going on here?

Like that's just weird that our brains wouldn't start forming memories until a certain age. Sure. When we were born, what's up with that? Why don't we remember being in the womb or sitting on a cloud, waiting to come down into your mom's tummy or being like a Laotian gunman or something

before you got to the cloud? That kind of thing. Why don't we remember any of that? Well, we can get to that in one second, but we should go ahead and just say historically that for many, many, many years, like 100 years, they thought that we just simply, our little baby brains weren't formed enough

to be able to make these memories happen. Right, which is a legitimate theory. Yeah, I don't think they looked into it that much though. But I mean, we develop at a certain pace. Like we don't even have kneecaps for the first several months, two years maybe. Oh, really? Yeah, you don't have kneecaps, pal.

I don't think I knew that. That's why baby legs are so weird looking. You just want to chew on them. Right. But yeah, so we develop, like we don't come out of the womb fully grown. So you can, it's not the most bonehead. It's not spontaneous regeneration bad theory.

No, but they didn't, for about 100 years, they didn't even look into it much, I don't think. And then for the past 20 years, they've started to. Well, hold on. What is it called? Are you talking about childhood amnesia? I am, previously known as infantile amnesia. By your favorite, Mr. Sigmund Freud.

Oh, and guess what? What a surprise. He said that it had to do with repressed sexual urges. Holy cow, I can't believe it. Freud equated something with sex. Everything, sex, sex, sex, it's crazy. Sure. He said that what we did was we repressed our memories

of traumatic, often sexual urges and formed screen memories to block the unconscious id. Right, and by screen memories, no memories is another way to put that. Sure. Because most people apparently can't come up with a concrete memory from their childhood until they turned about age three.

Right. And that's as far back as most people can remember it. Yeah, I can remember back that far. My first memory was in my first house that we moved from when I was three. And I remember very specifically a couple of things. I remember my mom wrapping her wedding ring on the back window when it was time to come in and eat.

And I remember right before we moved out, we were eating on the floor. That was, you know, the furniture was gone. And the next door neighbor, Billy Bright, came up to our screen door and like, stood in the doorway and just watched us eat. And I remember that. Huh, and I was three.

Gotcha. What about you? My earliest memory, I must have been pretty young because I was still wearing diapers. So I was definitely less than, I was younger than seven. Okay. And I was banging goodbye on a storm window, a storm door. And my older sister Karen was babysitting me.

And my mom was leaving this how I used to say goodbye. So I couldn't talk. So it's definitely younger than six. Sure. And I was banging on the storm window and just put my arm right through it. Ah. And I remember that scene.

But that's my earliest memory. Well, no, why do you remember that? Were you cut and wounded? I was, I don't remember pain or anything like that, but I was definitely bleeding everywhere. I remember my sister Karen just screaming, bloody murder, she was so freaked out. I love that you were mannish enough at that age

to put your arm through a storm. Yeah, I was like, it's nothing. Don't worry about it, Karen. It's not a Josh door. Right, yeah. And then I went and started a fire. Wow, good for you. So that's my earliest memory.

But again, it's sporadic. I can't really, I can't tell you what age it took place at. Yeah, well, neither aside from knowing that I lived in that house and I moved at three. One of the things that I recognize that as a very concrete memory though is that there's no photos of it. Apparently, if you look through family photos,

it's very easy to generate false memories. Okay, that makes sense. Or, you know, obviously you can support the memories that you do have as vague as they are by looking at family photos with these service cues. There were no photos of this one. And I was wearing diapers. So to me, this constitutes my earliest memory.

We'll get to the cues as well in a minute. But what they did figure out in the past 20 years from doing a lot of studying is that they've determined that children as young as three months old can actually form memories. It's just the fact that these memories don't stick around as long term. Right, and even more than that,

they've also determined that we're born with the ability to form unconscious memories. Yeah, talk about that. That's pretty cool. Okay, so basically we have two kinds of memory. We have explicit memory, right? Sure. Do you remember when we talked about dogs perceiving time?

Yeah. We touched on this then too. Right. We talked about explicit memory or semantic. No, I'm sorry. We talked about explicit memory, right? Or episodic memory is the name of it. Right.

And then there's the other kind, the unconscious memories, which are referred to as semantics. So you remember when I asked you in Do Dogs Perceive Time what you had for breakfast? Right, right. And you were describing it in detail, which lent itself to, it was evidential that that was an episodic memory.

Like you clearly had memories of it. Right, I recall senses and things like that. With a semantic memory, that's where you learn how to play a piano. And you might not remember learning to play the piano, but you can remember how to play the piano because you learned it. You're accessing a different kind of memory.

Right. And oddly enough, if you lose your memory in an accident or something in Indonesia, you may be able to still remember how to play the piano. I find this stuff absolutely fascinating. Yeah, me too. Okay, so for unconscious memory, we're born with that. But it does take several months, if not years,

to start to develop episodic memory, right? Right. What does episodic memory work? Well, is that what, are you talking about encoding? Yeah, okay. Well, the brain obviously to create a memory you need to create a synapse, which is just a connection firing within your brain.

Yeah, between two neurons. Right. And what happens is when you have a memory, you encode that memory, that sensory information into your memory bank, and then from there, your brain categorizes, it kind of files it away like you would on your computer. Yeah, and then weird to think about this, Chuck,

there are a series of brain cells in your brain right now. Right, just a few. That are connected via synapses. Yeah. That are responsible for maintaining your memory of the scent of a gardenia. I know. How mind-boggling is that?

My brain is melting. Okay, so when you think of the scent of a gardenia, you can come up with it, right? Yeah. You can kind of remember what it's like. I'm right now, I'm right there. Apparently, when you smell a gardenia over and over, you can pick up more elements of that smell.

Oh, more nuances within the smell? Right, exactly, and you can add to that memory more and more and more. That makes sense. Right, but also, the more that you think about the scent of a gardenia, the more that you recall it, the stronger that memory gets, right? Yeah, I would think so.

Yeah. Kind of like a chef with their palate. So, yeah, right, but I mean, it's like if you train yourself to think of something, or you think of something a lot naturally, your memories of it become stronger because that neural connection through the synapses becomes stronger, biochemically stronger.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Like when I think of milk steak, I can recall that scent, because I think about it on a daily basis. I don't know what that is, but that's like the second time this week I've heard that. What is milk steak? Well, it was from, it's always sunny in Philadelphia last week.

Okay, so what was that? Milk steak is a real thing. I think it's a steak that's literally boiled in milk, and I get the impression that it's some old school, like from the 1800s or something. Got you, okay. But it was very funny, obviously, on that show for Charlie to say it's his favorite food.

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Visit gateonetravel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's Gate The Number One Travel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. 30 years ago, a van exploded in a parking garage below the World Trade Center. The plan was to send the North Tower crashing

into the South. It failed, but six people were killed and more than 1,000 injured. The masterminds behind it all were just getting started and would soon change the world forever. Featuring Never Before Heard Audio, this is a story told by investigators from around the world using double agents

and an undercover operative to bring the bomber to justice. This is Operation Trade Bomb, an Apple original podcast hosted by Mark Smerling. Follow Operation Trade Bomb on Apple podcasts. Anyway, so where were we? Memory, once your brain has filed those things away, if you want to recall that memory after it's consolidated, you need to retrieve these files

like you would on your computer again, same way, and well, not the same way, but the same theory. And in order to do this, your brain literally retraces those original synapses that led to the memory in the first place. So it pulls up all that information for you. I've read another article on memory formation and that process was compared to

wearing a path through the woods, right? Right. You go through the first time, it might consist of like some broken ferns or branches or something like that. So you can kind of find your way, but over the course of months or years, the more you use it, the more visible it is

and the more easily accessible it is. Oh, that make like forging a trail. Oh, cool. All right, so we're talking about encoding because of the original held belief that babies could not encode. Right. They thought, all right, well, maybe they have this memory

but they can't encode it. Not true. So it says a study with the mobile. The little babies in the mobile. In the ribbon? Yeah. Their little needless baby legs. They took these little chubby baby legs

and they were talking two and three month olds and they tied ribbon to, I guess, jute rope would have been cruel to little tender baby legs. Right. Or to sew it with like a rusty needle and twine. Yeah, so they take ribbon and they tie it to a baby's legs and then tie it to a mobile above their head

and they found that a baby learned that by kicking their legs, they would make the mobile move which made the baby's coup in purr, I would imagine. But I thought babies always kicked their legs so I kind of wondered about this. That one, I found that same, I had that same idea myself

because later on when they placed the same babies under a mobile, they would start kicking their legs like they wanted to make it move with the ribbon although the ribbon was no longer attached and they took from that, they remembered that if you're under a mobile, kick your legs and it moves. Maybe they were saying, I don't have knee gaps.

Maybe. Kicking their legs around. Yeah, but that actually raises a really excellent point. Like I'm pretty sure any evidence that you can come up with, it's like trying to determine whether or not animals are happy. Yeah, sure.

We express our worldviews, our emotions, everything verbally or through written language. But it's through language. So before, while we're pre-verbal, everything is up in the air. It's almost impossible to come up with definitive evidence of anything that surrounds infants. That's actually, that's a good setup for later too

with the verbal, but that's just a tease. Okay. Just to close on that study though, they found that six month old babies actually picked up that relationship between kicking legs and the mobile moving faster. So this is what led them to think that babies actually gradually accelerate that

instead of, oh, we have no memory and all of a sudden it's my third birthday and now I do have memory. So it's a gradual thing instead of a sudden, a rapid growth. And there's another type of memory called implicit memory, right? Yes.

This is, we're born with this, but it's also different from our ability to form unconscious memories. It's controlled by the cerebellum. And basically this is like our ability to remember that, oh yeah, we are hungry and we need to eat. Right.

Or we need to seek out our mother's warmth or something like that. Sure, like I hear her voice and I know that means that the milk is coming soon. But that also sticks with us throughout our entire lives. So we don't necessarily forget that, right? Right. So I mean, you don't ever forget like,

oh, I'm hungry, I need to eat or, you know, I would like to be warm right now. Right, right. That usually helps me survive. But we're not, that's not centered around necessarily a specific event in time. We've yet to figure out how to put things in the context of a timeline,

which apparently is where real explicit memory begins, right? And that's when you need the cues. And that's what we've kind of figured out, not we of course, but that's what they have figured out is the depth between the babies and the adults. Right. Is they cannot pick up on the cues from their past.

And one of them that you're talking about was speech, verbalization. Right. So we apparently not only do we use language to express ourselves or our thoughts or views or opinions or emotions even. We also apparently form memories using language. Yeah, autobiographical memories.

Right, there was this really interesting study that is in this article, which by the way, is called, can a person remember being born? It's on the site, it was written by the esteemed and now famous Kristen Conger. Yes, of Stuff Mom Never Told You. Right. And it's a very dense article.

I gotta say, there was not much fluff in here. Right, no, Chuck usually highlights like the most important ones. I'm looking at his article right now. The entire article is yellow. It's all yellow. Yeah, it's a good article. So this study, it was a 2004 study

and it found that it was a study of 27 and 39 month old boys and girls. And it found that if children didn't know the words to describe an event when it happened, they couldn't describe it later after learning the appropriate words. That is awesome. Isn't it?

Very cool. So apparently our language development and memory formation are very closely tied and as you'll notice that was a 2004 study, we're just starting to crack the mystery of childhood amnesia. Right, right. You know?

I got another one for you too. Let's hear it. In relation to memory context has a lot to do with it. And what they found in another study was that preschool age kids can explain sequential order but sequential order is not the same thing as a timeline of your life. Right, so if you're taken to a circus,

you might remember first the clown came out and then the bear attacked the trainer and that kind of thing. But it's not like this happened two days before I started reading the Ramona Quimby series. Something like that. Exactly. And that, like I was saying,

that timeline is what forms our life. Or else we just have a cluster of weird memories of bears attacking trainers and one chapter of a Ramona Quimby book or setting something on fire. And how can you, if our lives are nothing but a string of memories and hopes for the future, what kind of life is that if we don't have a timeline to fit it on?

Good point. That's how we develop our sense of self. Absolutely. And what was, there was another cool stat in here about how it ties to self-recognition and your ability to recognize yourself as yourself. And they say that they don't think babies have this skill and they cannot basically don't have a personal identity

until they're about two years old. Not only that, they have no sense of concreteness of the world around them. So I can't remember what age, it's a very young age that they start to develop this. But say within the first two months, when you're sitting there cooing over a baby and you leave their field of vision, you're gone.

You don't exist any longer and you never did. Well, that's sad. Isn't it? Well, luckily that goes away very quickly because I mean, again, what kind of way is that to live? Don't tell the moms that. Isn't that odd? Sure.

Like you don't exist when you're not in their field of vision. Yeah. Oh, that's kind of comforting almost in a way too. I guess when you thump them and run away, they're just like, where's my head? I wish I could be forgotten instantly by many people I meet. Oh, it's nice.

And what about the cultural aspect of this? I found this interesting as well, stat boy. Yeah, they found that, and this isn't surprising for some reason, but they found in relation to memory that Westerners, personal memories, focus more on themselves, whereas Easterners remember themselves

as part of a group scenario. Isn't that? Yeah, it's because we're selfish. Selfish Westerners. I know. Me, me, me. And the other cool thing too about the parents, they said that parents can,

and this is really good for parents to know actually, the more that you describe things to your children as they're growing up, the better they're going to not only be able to recall that, but be able to describe their own experiences later in life. The more detailed you get with your recounting, like remember we went to the zoo yesterday

and you saw the bear that had the bow tie on, and then the guy threw the peanut at him, and where should I go from here? So the more detailed you are with going over these things with your kid every day, then the more they're gonna be better off later on in life. And Chuck, you're gonna like this little outside research. I read a study, or I read an article on a study,

I should admit, of 15 months old, that shows that sporadic napping actually helps us form the memories needed to learn languages. Really? Yeah, so they used a made-up language that they taught to these kids.

Esperanto? Not quite. It was like just babble, but it did have patterns in it. Gotcha. Recognizable patterns. And they found that kids who nap more often were able to pick up this language

to retain memories of how to speak this language better than kids who didn't nap as often. You're ready to travel in 2023, and since 1981, Gait One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gait One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours and European Riffer Cruises.

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30 years ago, a van exploded in a parking garage below the World Trade Center. The plan was to send the North Tower crashing into the South. It failed, but six people were killed and more than 1,000 injured. The masterminds behind it all were just getting started and would soon change the world forever. Featuring never-before-heard audio,

this is a story told by investigators from around the world. Using double agents and an undercover operative to bring the bomber to justice. This is Operation Trade Bomb, an Apple original podcast hosted by Mark Smerling. Follow Operation Trade Bomb on Apple podcasts. You know, I think that ties into something we said

a long time ago about the brain during sleep using that time to file everything away. That was in maybe a sleep podcast. And that's what dreams are too. Right. That they're miss files. Dude, we're just covering everything we've covered in the past.

So, we'll circle, buddy. Yeah, we're good like that, aren't we? We should we talk about how toothpaste and orange juice don't mix? That's a classic. I guess that's it, right? I'm done. If you want to learn more about...

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Visit GateOneTravel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's GateTheNumberOneTravel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. The South Dakota Stories, volume one. She was a city girl, but always somewhere else in her head. Somewhere where bison roam, rivers flow,

and people get their hiking boots dirty. Like, actually dirty. So, one day she fled west and discovered this place of beauty, history, and a delicious taste of adventure. But before she knew it, she was driving away with memories to share and the hopes of returning.

Because there's so much South Dakota, so little time.