Your Memories...

[joal0503]

"The storage in sensory memory and short-term memory generally have a strictly limited capacity and duration, which means that information is available only for a certain period of time, but is not retained indefinitely. By contrast, long-term memory can store much larger quantities of information for potentially unlimited duration (sometimes a whole life span)."

What are some of the oldest memories you have? How are you sure they are real?
Why do you think you still remember these specific memories?

I just find it fascinating and strange...that I still have these memories, that probably shaped my perspective in some unknown way. Some things I have a decent guess at why they were imprinted...but others seem just so random and arbitrary...And the MORE and more I try to remember the events, the stranger it seems that I still remember them. Even the smallest details and nuances are present, but I will have no idea why I remember it.

Reaching back into the depths...theres one memory that I can sort of say, "yea thats my earliest memory I can still recall to this day". Being fed a bottle, I vividly can still taste the sort of warmth the milk had, my grandmother holding me, walking me over to the kitchen, the symbols on the microwave as she held me and warmed the bottle, the furniture arrangement, the portion of the couch she sat down with me in her arms, its all there. And RECALLING this memory is just as confounding/amazing as it is the memory itself. How Im able to picture this in such crisp detail, without anything other than my third eye sort of projecting it into an imaginary, non existant platform...god im thinking too much now.

I can still recall dreams, nightmares...puking my brains out with a bad case of the flu around the age of 5, A TON of stuff I just remember. I do wonder sometimes how much of my memory is actually reliable ... but to me these things have stuck with me ever since, well, i can remember.

sharez?

 

[Chad]

Strangely, enough I don't remember very much before I was 8 years old. This was about the time same my mother decided to take me off of my ADHD medications.

I am not sure if they are related at all but it is interesting because people generally remember thing well before 8 years old. It also may be due to repressed memories because I was abused by my biological parents at a very young age. I was adopted by my parents at age 8.

I find memories very fascinating as well but mostly because I know I should remember stuff that I don't remember.

 

[Starswirl]

My earliest memories are hazy. I have two in particular, probably from when I was around 4.

In one, I was was standing in line in a shopping mall. I looked around and saw a man in his 30s standing about 20 feet away. He smiled at me. Aaand that's it.

The second was from my 4th or 5th birthday. I remember explaining to my confused grandfather why I wanted some party decoration to look the way it did.

Or perhaps those were just dreams. I only remember a handful of things from Kindergarten, a few more from First Grade, and then quite a lot from Second Grade and onward.

 

[The Gopher]

My earliest memory was around 8 or 16 months old? I thought it was two however I worked it out with people who were older and it was impossible to be older than 16 months.

I was on a golf buggy being held onto by someone (who was apparently terrified that I would fall out) I can still see the entire clip in my mind as well as what my grandfather said. (Probably the only memory of him)

This and one other are the only really early memory's I can confirm. I have confirmed that I made up quite a few memory's however. (probably believing some dreams I had were actually real?)

 

[Duxwing]

My earliest memory is telling another child my age when I was four. I can still remember seeing my hand in front of my face, all the fingers of my left hand (save for the thumb) extended and the words coming from my mouth "I'm four". I also remember riding on a tiny electric car-- the kind that children ride-- and remembering the loud crackling and crunching of the parking lot pavement beneath the plastic tires, the working guages, my own terror of hitting something or falling out. I can still remember our neighbors from back then: an older girl and a younger boy. Once, when we three were playing hide-and-seek, the girl froze the blood in my veins and sent me screaming from the room by lying down in my bathtub and lifting her leg up when I came to look for them therein. One does not expect those who are hiding from them to reveal themselves, much less do so by making something horrifyingly out of the ordinary occur! These early memories take me back quite far in time; thanks for providing me the opportunity, joal.

-Duxwing

 

[MissQuote]

I have vivid memories going back to the age of two. I know I was two or maybe a little younger because of where we lived- in Santa Cruz CA, when I was three we moved to Phoenix AZ. I remember Santa Cruz very well in quite a bit of definition and detail, remember being with my mom there not my grandparents.

My grandparents lived near there and always took me there during the times I lived with them (my mom passed me off to them often in my very early childhood) I know I was only two in those early memories as I was with her and my sister what there who was a small infant. (When my mom passed me off to the grandparents she would pass my sister off to her dad at the same time, we were actually not together much at all until I was the age of seven, except the brief six month here or six months there when my mom had us both) So I have many memories of Santa Cruz growing up but I can say without a doubt that they go back to the age of two due to the other characters that are in the memories.

I also have a very vague memory from younger than that where I was sitting on the floor playing with blocks, and another of when my sister was born- I was sitting under a table in the corner of the candle lit room, less than a year and a half old, completely forgotten by all the grownups as a birth was happening (My sister was born at home, as was my brother, myself in the hospital due to serious complications [I am the oldest]) I am not sure if these two memories are completely real as they are sort of shadowy and dream like , it s possible I fabricated them a bit or even completely.

I read somewhere that most people have difficulty recalling their pre-verbal memories as there is not language context for the brain to use to describe them- the memories are pure sensory information. The brain struggles to describe what it recalls as it is trying to recall it as it happened but as it happened there was no language yet to describe it with and the brain can't or won't make the creative leap of describing with "language" they do not speak. Does that make sense?

I have a little bit of a theory that the younger a child learns to read the easier it will be to recall pre-verbal memories, as the creative wires are being crossed with the logical ones during the process of learning written word, teaching the brain very early how to describe and understand things in abstract.

 

[Architect]

We actually have limited storage which fills up in our early 20's. The memories of the day, which are stored chemically, are rearranged when we sleep. The keepers go into new neural connections (permanent storage) and the discards are lost (chemical patterns erased). This is one reason sleep is so important, it mainly has to do with brain health.

Longer term old memories are rearranged, probably to make room for new ones. We actually don't remember much from years ago, vague impressions or apparent details that actually aren't that accurate. I don't remember much from childhood, some small details and impressions really.

I'm exposed to so much changing information I actively work to not try and remember it. I use systems such as Omnifocus to offload all my tasks, dreams and plans for example. That's a huge relief to not try and manage. Likewise for visual memories I now depend on my cameras, and for auditory I make recordings everywhere. Computers have superior abilities in this department that we should take advantage of.

 

[SpaceYeti]

I have several very vague memories. from when I was very young. I can't really put a number on the age, because the memories are so vague.

1) I believe this is my earliest memory. I remember a bottle. I'm eating from it, so it's a huge cylinder in front of my face. I'm not exactly aware of the location of my arms or legs or anything, just the big bottle in front of my face. I remember thinking the bottle didn't necessarily have an infinite amount of milk in it, but at least enough that it wouldn't run out from one feeding. I was wrong. The milk came lower and lower, and then disappeared. I was upset. I don't remember why I was upset. Perhaps because I was still hungry, but I suspect more because I discovered the milk ran out, and I didn't like that fact. Bottles have milk. It's what they do!

2) I also remember being pushed down the steps of the basement... by a ghost! It was dark, all I could really see is the whiteness by the door, which them pushed me back. Years later, upon recalling this memory, my dad told me the whiteness was a shirt hanging on the door, and he caught me so that I didn't actually fall down the steps.

3) The single most vague memory I have is being in the living room of the house I lived in for the first year of my life. I was behind the couch, in front of what I think was an electric piano, and facing the door to the basement. In my head it's the door to the basement, I don't know why that door would be in the living room. It could be a correct memory, it could not be. I'm simply not sure. The basement, by the way, is the basement that second memory took place in, as well.

I have other young memories, but those three, I believe, are from the first year of my life, since they seem to have occurred in the house I lived my first year in.

 

[redbaron]

I remember pouring washing powder everywhere when I was two. I only remember the act of doing it, and that I found it utterly hilarious and was laughing uncontrollably while throwing powder on everything possible. Tables, chairs, couch, TV, kitchen. Everything. I'm not sure what the circumstances were though, and how I managed to do it.

I don't remember anything else from my first year or two of my life at all. Only when I was older, 3+

 

[joal0503]

I remember pouring washing powder everywhere when I was two. I only remember the act of doing it, and that I found it utterly hilarious and was laughing uncontrollably while throwing powder on everything possible. Tables, chairs, couch, TV, kitchen. Everything. I'm not sure what the circumstances were though, and how I managed to do it.

I don't remember anything else from my first year or two of my life at all. Only when I was older, 3+

for some reason reading this triggered something. Me breaking into my sister's room and painting myself like a clown. And then having the full blown wrath of my sister's rage cometh down upon me.

 

[MissQuote]

I'm exposed to so much changing information I actively work to not try and remember it. I use systems such as Omnifocus to offload all my tasks, dreams and plans for example. That's a huge relief to not try and manage. Likewise for visual memories I now depend on my cameras, and for auditory I make recordings everywhere. Computers have superior abilities in this department that we should take advantage of.

I have had picture and recordings trigger memory in detail that I never would have thought about or remembered other wise.

Two specific examples are when i saw a picture of my sister and I in frilly dresses and barely not toddlers, three and four, we are in the back yard of the house my mom was renting in AZ, standing in front of the primer grey school bus she had and pretending to play air guitar.

When I saw that picture the nearly the whole day flooded back to me. That we were dressed up as frilly as could be because our grandparents were coming and the anticipation of waiting for them, the moments before and after the picture was taken- deciding where to stand, deciding to be silly for the picture. Not only that but all kinds f memories from just living in that house and the time there came back.

With audio, I remember finding a tape in a drawer in the back room of my grandparents house when I was thirteen and putting it in the cassette player to listen. It was a recording of a short time after the above picture was taken. My grandpa telling me and my sister a bed time story and we keep digressing and interrupting the story, and the whole time I am busy trying to talk my sister out of one of her cookies. We had both been given two cookies as desert and I ate mine really fast. She still had a whole cookie left and I wanted it. So i was on a mission to convince her that because she still had a cookie and I had none that must mean she had more to begin with and that wasn't fair so she should share. My grandpa can be heard chuckling here and there but not intervening except to try to help my little three year old sister with her logic about the matter, trying to encourage her debate of the matter but not telling her the answer, all the while letting me continue and ultimately win a portion of her cookie.

While hearing the tape I remembered the whole scene and the type of cookies and my grandpa laying on the floor on his back, myself climbing over to my sister and trying to show her with my hands my reasoning, my own thinking the whole time that she wasn't stupid but gullible and if I could talk her into this it would be better than actually a having another cookie of my own.

Neither of these times were ever things I thought about at all in the least, but the picture and audio brought them all back as if they were things I always had remembered and thought about.

But... then knowing how subjective memory really is, I wonder how much I made up in my head and how much was really in my head and brought to the surface. How much really did actually happen.

 

[IdeasNotTheProblem]

I read somewhere that most people have difficulty recalling their pre-verbal memories as there is not language context for the brain to use to describe them- the memories are pure sensory information. The brain struggles to describe what it recalls as it is trying to recall it as it happened but as it happened there was no language yet to describe it with and the brain can't or won't make the creative leap of describing with "language" they do not speak. Does that make sense?

I have a little bit of a theory that the younger a child learns to read the easier it will be to recall pre-verbal memories, as the creative wires are being crossed with the logical ones during the process of learning written word, teaching the brain very early how to describe and understand things in abstract.

I had been wondering if that was the case. Any chance you remember where you read that? I wonder if the more social an animal is the stronger their memory.

I do know there's an emotional context to all my early memories, either happy or sad, which may also tie in with the social aspect.

A happy one was when I was 5, my family and I just moved into a new house and I got to play with my new neighbors for the first time. We wandered off "exploring" and decided to cool off in a large mud puddle. We were scolded harshly and had to wash up with the garden hose. The water from the hose was freezing cold.

Another was visiting my grandmother after my uncle had died. I remember her reaction to us walking in the house perfectly. I know exactly what she said and how she said it. I also remember being confused that she wasn't happy when she saw us. Although I can't recall any visits before that.

 

[MissQuote]

I had been wondering if that was the case. Any chance you remember where you read that? I wonder if the more social an animal is the stronger their memory.

I do know there's an emotional context to all my early memories, either happy or sad, which may also tie in with the social aspect.

My memory fails me. Sorry.