A study by neuroscientists from Their university broke up (England) proved that a short-term change in body perception – visualizing oneself as a child – helps to restore early autobiographical memories. This is the first experiment to show that embodying a child’s image increases access to memories. perhaps even from an age hidden by “childhood amnesia.”

Baby face illusion

A team led by Dr. Utkarsh Gupta tested 50 adults using the “presence illusion” technique. Participants saw a live feed of their face on a screen, but with a filter that turned their adult appearance into a child’s one, with big eyes and soft features. The head movements were synchronized with the image, creating the feeling that this was their real child self. The control group saw their current faces. The results were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

After the session, participants were interviewed, recalling events from childhood and the past year. Autobiographical memories are vivid mental images that allow you to relive the past, like traveling back in time. The researchers assessed how many details—places, emotions, sounds—were able to reconstruct.

Key to childhood memories

Participants who saw the child’s face remembered much more details from early years than the control group. The illusion did not affect recent events, which emphasizes the connection with childhood. Scientists explain: the brain encodes memories along with the sensation of the body at that time. Returning to a child’s appearance is like opening an old diary, where the entries come to life.

“All the events that we remember are not only the experience of the external world, but also the experience of our body, which is always present. “We found that temporary changes in the bodily self, in particular embodying a child’s version of one’s own face, can significantly improve access to childhood memories,” says Dr. Gupta, lead author.

The connection between body and memory

Why does this work? As a child, our body was different – smaller, with different proportions and perception. The brain associates events with these physical sensations. The illusion of a child’s face “switches” the brain to that period, helping to pull out memories. It’s like wearing an old T-shirt that takes you back to your school days.

Professor Jane Aspell, Head of the Self and Body Laboratory at ARU, adds:

“When our childhood memories were formed, we had a different body. So we asked the question: If we can help people feel the features of their body again, can we help them remember that time? Our results show that the embodied self and autobiographical memory are linked.”

Prospects for therapy

These findings open the way to new methods of working with memory. Typically, memories are lost before the age of three due to “infantile amnesia,” a period when the brain does not yet register episodes. But if bodily signals help bring them back, it could be useful for therapy, such as for dementia.

“These results are really exciting and suggest that more complex body illusions could be used to recover memories from different stages of our lives – perhaps even from early infancy,” Aspell said.

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