How Does Your Brain Deletes Your Childhood Memories Work?

Your brain uses a special cleaning tool to forget old memories and make space for new ones.

Imagine your brain is like a toy box full of all the things you've ever played with, each toy represents a memory. When you're little, you play with a lot of toys every day, so there are many memories in that big toy box. But as you grow up, you don’t need to remember every toy from when you were 2 years old.

Your brain has a cleaning crew that comes by once in a while and says: “Let’s take out the toys we haven’t played with in a long time.” These are your childhood memories. They get put into a special corner of the toy box, like a storage room, not completely gone, but harder to find.

Sometimes you might remember them again if you see something that makes you think about those old toys, like hearing a song from when you were little or seeing a picture of your favorite cartoon character from way back then.

So your brain doesn’t delete your childhood memories all at once. It just moves them out of the way so you can make more space for new memories, like learning to ride a bike or remembering your birthday.