Other than some joyful or tragic experiences that struck us during childhood, old memories are hard to recall. According to the paper published at Nature Science, newly formed neurons in the hippocampus – the part of the brain responsible for memory formation, motivation and emotion, could root out any information we learned previously. Researchers believe this may provide clues as to why childhood memories are hard to recall.

New neurons are developed rapidly in the hippocampus and it slows down with age. The same happens to mice and several other mammals. So when one is in childhood, he/she tends to forget what was learned a day/week/month ago; on the contrary, since neuron growths are slow in adults, they tend to remember more of the things happened during their adulthood.

It was previously shown that increasing neural proliferation before learning can improve memory formation in adult mice. However, as the new study suggests – after something is learned, neuron growth in hippocampus can erase those memories.

It’s obvious no one wants to recall bad memories, neuron growth really helps you with that and is not at all bad as it gives room for new memories.