你还记得3岁前的事吗

近日，一项研究表明，婴儿时期具备形成记忆的能力。那为什么我们回忆不起来呢？

今天你练听力了吗？

🤔️小作业：

1. What does the passage suggest about the phenomenon of infantile amnesia?

A. It occurs because early memories are stored in unstable neural networks.

B. The study conclusively explains why adults cannot recall early childhood events.

C. Memories formed in infancy are erased by later experiences.

D. The research provides no definitive answer to why these memories become inaccessible.

无注释原文：

Babies can form memories, and they do it a lot like adults

From: Science News

A baby's early life has a lot of milestones: first giggle, first tooth, first step. A brain scanning study adds to the list: first memory.

Infants can form memories, and they use a memory structure in the brain called the hippocampus to do it, researchers report in the March 21 Science. The results shore up the idea that memories can in fact be made during the earliest years of our lives, though what happens to these memories as the days, weeks and years roll by remains mysterious.

“What is really new in this paper is that it implicates the hippocampus in the encoding of early memories,” says developmental and cognitive scientist Vladimir Sloutsky of Ohio State University in Columbus. And that's important, Sloutsky says, because it shows the hippocampus “is mature enough to encode early memories.”

Young babies can be difficult research subjects. But for the new study, awake babies were kept calm in functional MRI scanners with a parent nearby and earphones to protect them from startling sounds. In the scanner, these babies, who ranged from 4 months old to nearly 25 months old, saw images, one after another, of people, places or objects. All the while, scientists recorded blood flow in the babies' brains, a proxy of neural activity.

Occasionally, the babies were tested with a pair of images, one of which they had seen before. If the babies looked longer at the previously seen image, researchers reasoned, they likely remembered it. “We can kind of quantify the strength of their memory based on how much they look at it,” says study coauthor Nick Turk-Browne of Yale University. “And then the trick in this sort of study is to then go back and look at, when they first saw the picture, what was different in the brain for pictures that they later had a memory for, versus that they later forgot?”

The difference, it turns out, was in the babies' hippocampi, seahorse-shaped structures, one on each side of their brains. In the study, 13 babies were younger than a year, and 13 babies were older than a year. The older babies could remember about half of the images they had seen before. And this memory feat corresponded to brain activity in a part of the hippocampus.

The results add to other evidence that babies, the human sort as well as rats and mice, can in fact form memories, and starts to answer how. Added to earlier research, the new study shows “that in humans, like previously found in rats and mice, infant learning actively engages the hippocampus to form memories,” says neuroscientist Cristina Alberini of New York University.

Still, the results don't explain why we can't recall some of the earliest moments of our lives, a phenomenon known as infantile amnesia. It's possible that these memories aren't effectively stored elsewhere in the brain. Or it could be that neural traces persist but aren't able to be called back up.

- ◆ -

注：完整题目见本文开头；中文文本为机器翻译并非一一对应，仅供参考

含注释全文：

Babies can form memories, and they do it a lot like adults

From: Science News

A baby's early life has a lot of milestones: first giggle, first tooth, first step. A brain scanning study adds to the list: first memory.

婴儿的成长历程有很多里程碑：第一次咯咯笑、第一颗牙齿、第一次走路。如今，一项脑部扫描研究为这份成长清单增添了新内容：第一次记忆的形成。

milestone /ˈmaɪl.stəʊn/ 表示“里程碑；重大事件；转折点”，英文解释为“an important event in the development or history of something or in someone's life”举个🌰：He felt that moving out of his parents' home was a real milestone in his life. 他感到搬出父母家是他一生中一个真正的转折点。

giggle /ˈɡɪɡ.əl/ 可以作动词，也可以作名词，表示“（因为感到有趣、窘迫或紧张而）咯咯地笑，傻笑”，英文解释为“to laugh repeatedly in a quiet but uncontrolled way, often at something silly or rude or when you are nervous”举个🌰：（动词）The girls giggled at the joke. 女孩子们让这笑话逗得咯咯笑。（名词）There were a few nervous giggles from people in the audience. 观众中有人发出几声紧张的笑声。

Infants can form memories, and they use a memory structure in the brain called the hippocampus to do it, researchers report in the March 21 Science. The results shore up the idea that memories can in fact be made during the earliest years of our lives, though what happens to these memories as the days, weeks and years roll by remains mysterious.

研究人员在3月21日的《科学》杂志上报告称，婴儿确实具备形成记忆的能力，这种能力依托于大脑中的记忆中枢——海马体（hippocampus）。该研究证实，人类在幼年时期确实可以形成记忆，但关于这些记忆如何随着时间推移发生变化，目前仍是个未解之谜。

infant /ˈɪn.fənt/ 表示“婴儿”，英文解释为“a baby or a very young child”如：a newborn infant 新生儿。

表示“（大脑）海马”，英文解释为“a part of the brain that is part of the limbic system and is important for memory”

1）表示“支撑”，英文解释为“to stop a wall or a building from falling down by supporting it with building materials such as wood or metal”举个🌰：Boundary walls have had to be shored up. 边界墙须用支柱支撑。

2）表示“改善，提高”，英文解释为“to support or improve an organization, agreement, or system that is not working effectively or that is likely to fail”举个🌰：The new public relations manager has the difficult task of shoring up the company's troubled image. 新任公关经理面临改善公司不良形象的艰巨任务。

表示“（时间）流逝”，英文解释为“If an amount of time rolls by, it passes.”举个🌰：The years rolled by, and I didn't see her again until she was married with two children. 流年似水，我再见到她时，她已经结了婚有了两个孩子。

“What is really new in this paper is that it implicates the hippocampus in the encoding of early memories,” says developmental and cognitive scientist Vladimir Sloutsky of Ohio State University in Columbus. And that's important, Sloutsky says, because it shows the hippocampus “is mature enough to encode early memories.”

“这篇论文真正新颖的地方在于，它揭示了海马体在早期记忆编码中的作用，”哥伦布市俄亥俄州立大学发育与认知科学家弗拉基米尔·斯劳斯基（Vladimir Sloutsky）说。斯劳斯基指出，这很重要，因为它表明海马体“已具备成熟的记忆编码机能”。

表示“牵连，涉及”，英文解释为“to show that someone is involved in a crime or partly responsible for something bad that has happened”举个🌰：Have they any evidence to implicate him in the robbery? 他们有证据表明他涉嫌抢劫案吗？

📍be implicated in表示“牵涉其中的；负有责任的”，英文解释为“If someone or something is implicated in a crime or a bad situation, they are involved in it or responsible for it.”

表示“把…译成电码（或密码）；把…编码”，英文解释为“to change something into a system for sending messages secretly, or to represent complicated information in a simple or short way”

cognitive /ˈkɒɡ.nə.tɪv/ 表示“认知的；感知的；认识的”，英文解释为“Cognitive means relating to the mental process involved in knowing, learning, and understanding things.”举个🌰：As children grow older, their cognitive processes become sharper. 随着孩子们长大，他们的认知过程也变得越来越敏锐了。

Young babies can be difficult research subjects. But for the new study, awake babies were kept calm in functional MRI scanners with a parent nearby and earphones to protect them from startling sounds. In the scanner, these babies, who ranged from 4 months old to nearly 25 months old, saw images, one after another, of people, places or objects. All the while, scientists recorded blood flow in the babies' brains, a proxy of neural activity.

对年幼的婴儿进行脑科学研究面临诸多挑战。在该项新研究中，采用功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）扫描仪，让清醒的婴儿在父母陪伴下保持平静状态，并佩戴隔音耳罩以防环境声干扰。参与实验的婴儿年龄介于4个月至25个月之间，他们在扫描仪中连续观看人物、场景和物品的图像，同时研究人员通过监测脑部血流变化来捕捉神经活动信号。

startling /ˈstɑː.təlɪŋ/ 表示“惊人的；令人震惊的”，英文解释为“surprising and sometimes worrying”如：startling results 令人震惊的结果。

proxy /ˈprɒk.si/ 表示“（由个人委托的）代理人，代表；代理权；代表权”，英文解释为“authority given to a person to act for someone else, such as by voting for them in an election, or the person who this authority is given to”如：a proxy vote 代投的一票。

📍Proxy原意是“代理人”或“代替物”。在科学语境中，它常指无法直接测量目标对象时使用的替代指标。

neural /ˈnjʊə.rəl/ 表示“神经的；神经系统的”，英文解释为“involving a nerve or the system of nerves that includes the brain”举个🌰：Some people suffered severe neural damage as a result of the disease. 有些人罹患这种疾病后神经受到严重损伤。

Occasionally, the babies were tested with a pair of images, one of which they had seen before. If the babies looked longer at the previously seen image, researchers reasoned, they likely remembered it. “We can kind of quantify the strength of their memory based on how much they look at it,” says study coauthor Nick Turk-Browne of Yale University. “And then the trick in this sort of study is to then go back and look at, when they first saw the picture, what was different in the brain for pictures that they later had a memory for, versus that they later forgot?”

实验过程中，研究者会随机出示成对的两张图片让婴儿辨认，其中一张属于先前展示过的内容。“我们通过注视时长来量化记忆强度，”该研究的共同作者、耶鲁大学的尼克·特克-布朗（Nick Turk-Browne）解释。“研究的关键在于回溯分析——当婴儿初次接触图像时，对于他们后来记住和遗忘的图像，大脑活动上存在何种差异？”

reason /ˈriː.zən/ 作动词，表示“推理，推断；判断”，英文解释为“to try to understand and to make judgments based on practical facts”举个🌰：Newton reasoned (that) there must be a force such as gravity 牛顿推断出这一定是由于某种力的缘故，比如重力。

quantify /ˈkwɒn.tɪ.faɪ/ 表示“以数量表述；量化；确定…的大小（或数量）”，英文解释为“to measure or judge the size or amount of something”举个🌰：It's difficult to quantify how many people will be affected by the change. 很难确定将有多少人受到该变化的影响。

versus /ˈvɜːsəs/ 经常看到缩写vs，vs.或者是单单一个v，就是指的versus，表示“（比较两种不同想法、选择等）与…相对，与…相比”，英文解释为“used to compare two different ideas, choices, etc.”如：private education versus state education 私立教育与公共教育相比，举个🌰：It is France versus Brazil in the final. 决赛是法国队对巴西队。

The difference, it turns out, was in the babies' hippocampi, seahorse-shaped structures, one on each side of their brains. In the study, 13 babies were younger than a year, and 13 babies were older than a year. The older babies could remember about half of the images they had seen before. And this memory feat corresponded to brain activity in a part of the hippocampus.

事实证明，差异在于婴儿的海马体，这种海马状的结构位于大脑两侧。在这项研究中，13个婴儿不到一岁，13个婴儿超过一岁。较大的婴儿能记住他们之前见过的大约一半图像。这种记忆能力与海马体特定区域的脑活动相对应。

表示“海马”，英文解释为“a small fish that swims in a vertical position and has a head like that of a horse”

The results add to other evidence that babies, the human sort as well as rats and mice, can in fact form memories, and starts to answer how. Added to earlier research, the new study shows “that in humans, like previously found in rats and mice, infant learning actively engages the hippocampus to form memories,” says neuroscientist Cristina Alberini of New York University.

这项研究进一步证明了，人类婴儿与老鼠、小鼠一样，确实能够形成记忆，并开始解答记忆形成的机制。纽约大学神经科学家克里斯蒂娜·阿尔贝里尼（Cristina Alberini）表示，结合早期研究结果，这项新研究表明“在人类身上，与老鼠和小鼠的研究发现类似，婴儿的学习过程会积极激活海马体，以形成记忆。”

Still, the results don't explain why we can't recall some of the earliest moments of our lives, a phenomenon known as infantile amnesia. It's possible that these memories aren't effectively stored elsewhere in the brain. Or it could be that neural traces persist but aren't able to be called back up.

尽管如此，这些研究结果仍无法解释为什么我们无法回忆起人生最早的记忆——这一现象被称为“婴儿期遗忘”（infantile amnesia）。一种可能的解释是，这些记忆未能有效存储在大脑的其他区域。另一种可能性则是，这些神经痕迹仍然存在，但无法被重新提取。

表示“幼稚的，孩子气的”，英文解释为“typical of a child and therefore unsuitable for an adult”如：infantile behaviour 幼稚的行为。

amnesia /æmˈniː.zi.ə/ /æmˈniː.ʒə/ 表示“记忆丧失，健忘（症）”，英文解释为“a medical condition that makes you unable to remember things”举个🌰：After the accident he suffered periods of amnesia. 那起事故后，他患了失忆症，发作了几次。

trace /treɪs/ 作动词，1）表示“找到，查出，发现”，英文解释为“to find someone or something that was lost”举个🌰：The police are trying to trace the mother of a newborn baby found abandoned outside a hospital. 警察试图查出那位把新生婴儿抛弃在医院外面的母亲。

2）表示“（根据事物的发展方式）查明…的起因（或源头），追溯”，英文解释为“to discover the causes or origins of something by examining the way in which it has developed”举个🌰：The practice of giving eggs at Easter can be traced back to (= first happened in) festivals in ancient China. 复活节送彩蛋的习俗可追溯至中国古代的节庆活动。

作名词，1）表示“痕迹，踪迹”，英文解释为“a sign that something has happened or existed”举个🌰：He attempted to cover up all the traces of his crime. 他试图掩盖他犯罪的蛛丝马迹。

2）表示“微量，少许”，英文解释为“a very slight amount”举个🌰：Traces of drugs were found in his blood. 在他的血液中发现了少许毒品。

persist /pəˈsɪst/ 1）表示“继续存在（发生）；持续；存留”，英文解释为“If something bad persists, it continues to exist or happen”举个🌰：If the pain persists, you must see a doctor. 如果一直痛，你就必须去看医生了。

2）表示“坚持；执意”，英文解释为“to continue to do something, although this is difficult, or other people oppose it”举个🌰：‘I don't think it's right,’ He persisted. “我认为那不对。”他坚持说道。

- 词汇盘点 -

- 词汇助记 By DeepSeek -

LearnAndRecord

2015年2月8日

2025年3月22日

第3696天

每天持续行动学外语