Where are all the memories before I was three years old?

Modern psychological research shows that the reason why children's memories can't be kept permanently before the age of 3 is that children's cerebral cortex cells are very reactive, and they tend to remember all the details of the observed objects easily. On the other hand, it is also because all areas of children's cerebral cortex are not fully developed before the age of 3. Children's memory materials promote the development of the brain, and the structure of the developed brain area controls the pre-developed brain area, which hinders the original memory and makes people unable to recall things that happened earlier.

This phenomenon is called amnesia in children.

Freud first put forward the concept of children's amnesia, which refers to the phenomenon that adults can't consciously recall personal events (or autobiographical memories) in early childhood.

Why don't we have memories of being three or even four or five years old?

Psychologists have found that around the age of 7, people's memories of early childhood begin to disappear. This phenomenon is what Freud called "childhood amnesia". Freud believed that these memories did not disappear, but were suppressed. However, modern research has found that children actually disappear because they don't have complex neural structures to establish and retain complex memories.

But many examples show that people's memories before the age of 3 can be reproduced under special circumstances. For example, those who miraculously survived the catastrophe, such as those who drowned in deep water or fell from a height, had near-death experiences. These survivors later insisted that their whole lives flashed before him before they lost consciousness, and this flash was not a fragment of some important events in their lives, but his whole life. People of all ages and races have reported this experience.

For a person, the memory before the age of 3 is vague, but the feeling is clear. When something similar happens, this feeling may be activated, thus affecting people's understanding of things, perception of the world and even personality development.