How old were you in your first memory? Like most people, probably no younger than 3 or 4. There are various ideas about where our early memories from childhood go, which we can test by tracking how memories in the brain evolve over development.
We are able to learn throughout life, but the most remarkable period of learning happens early on, as we acquire our first language, start moving and walking, and figure out the people and objects around us. There are detailed theories about how the adult brain learns, but they do not yet fully account for this developmental trajectory.
The mind has a limited capacity, and so we need prioritize information that is salient in the world (e.g., car horns, lightening flashes) or relevant for current goals (e.g., faces while looking for a friend in the crowd). How this prioritization happens in the brain is well understood in adults, but not in young children.
The visual system consists of a series of brain areas that have a map of the image that hits our eyes, as well as other areas that care about specific categories, such as objects, faces, and places. Despite such progress, little is known about how this system develops, and whether infants even have the same number and types of visual areas.
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