Why Do We Remember things From Our Childhood?

[emjay]

I find my visual is not very good at all. Blurry at best, sometimes completely lacking detail.

However my sound playback is amazing quality.

I'd be interested to hear what other people's playback is like! Maybe we should start a new thread?

I'd be up for that, but you start it, cos usually my threads fall upon deaf ears (pardon the pun) 

[Hatshepsut]

I had EMDR treatment for depression, and if there was a suppressed trauma, it didn't come out....

Scientific American lined EMDR up with several alternative therapies a few years back. It may have some connection with the basic fact that the same sensory and motor areas in the nervous system that mediate perception and action also "keep" memories for the same perceptions and actions. Kind of like "it comes out the same way it went in." So, the nerves that control the eyeball's rotation may help store perceptual memories related to looking at things. Cognitive Behavior therapy presumably engages verbal memory instead. Fascinating.

SciAm: http://www.scientificamerican.com/articl...oser-look/

I see, yes that's interesting. I suspect it is often the case, memory is notoriously unreliable. It's weird how much false confidence you can have though in your own memories.

Memory definitely goes through a lot of "editing" over time. I remembered some childhood episodes quite differently than the way my mother said they happened. Nowadays I don't remember before age 10 too well, it's all vague, and there's a feeling that I used to know things about this period which I don't anymore.

[bennyboy]

Yes, childhood memories are re-converted and re-processed heavily. What you actually experience is probably going to be dramatically different from what you originally experienced.

I know of studies where parents "planted" memories by mentioning false events during a casual conversation. Researchers then asked the children about the events several months later (I don't remeber the exact details, actually), and found that the "memories" were remembered as sensory events.