Memories: are you born with them?

Every newborn enters the world crying, grasping, seeking warmth. They seem to know how to breathe, how to swallow, how to startle at loud sounds.

But do they remember anything?

Your brain doesn’t start recording memories the moment you’re born. In fact, you’re not born with episodic memories at all.

What you are born with is something more fundamental. Procedural memory systems and reflexive patterns encoded in your nervous system before birth.

These aren’t memories in the way you think of them. They’re survival templates.

It all started in the womb.

A fetus at 30 weeks responds to sound by increasing heart rate. By 32 weeks, they show habituation, meaning they stop responding to repeated stimuli.

This is primitive learning. Yet, it is not stored as memory. Instead, it shapes neural pathways that influence behavior without conscious recall.

After birth, your hippocampus begins the slow work of forming explicit memories.

But here’s what’s remarkable.

This structure isn’t fully developed until around age three. Therefore, you have no memory of being two years old. The phenomenon is called childhood amnesia.

The hardware for memories isn’t formed yet.

What develops first is implicit memory. Your body remembers the rhythm of being rocked, the feel of skin contact, the pattern of feeding.

These aren’t thoughts you can access. They’re sensations that wire your nervous system, creating templates for safety, stress, and connection that persist throughout life.

By six months, recognition memory emerges. You begin to distinguish your mother’s face from a stranger’s.

By twelve months, you can recall events for brief periods. But it’s not until your prefrontal cortex matures, around age three to four, that you form the continuous narrative of self.

What you will later use to describe as your life.

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