Summary: A groundbreaking study has found that adults can recall more detailed childhood memories after briefly perceiving themselves with a childlike version of their own face. Using a virtual “enfacement illusion,” participants saw a live, altered image of their face resembling how they looked as children, creating a temporary sense of embodying their younger selves.
This experience significantly enhanced access to early episodic memories compared to a control group. The findings reveal that altering body perception can unlock forgotten memories and could inform new approaches for memory rehabilitation and research into childhood amnesia.
Key Facts:
- Bodily Self-Link: Temporarily embodying a childlike version of one’s face enhanced recall of early autobiographical memories.
- First-of-Its-Kind Study: This is the first evidence that changes to body perception can influence access to remote memories.
- Future Potential: The technique could one day be adapted for people with memory impairments or used to explore childhood amnesia.
Source: Anglia Ruskin University
New research has discovered that briefly altering how we perceive our own body can help unlock autobiographical memories – potentially even those from the early stages of childhood.
Published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, the study is the first to find that adults can better access their early memories after embodying a childlike version of their own face.
Led by neuroscientists at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in Cambridge, the study of 50 adult participants involved an “enfacement illusion”, which allows people to experience a face they see on a computer screen as their own, as though looking in a mirror.
The participants viewed a live video of their own face, digitally altered using an image filter to resemble how they might have looked as children. As they moved their heads, the face on screen mirrored their movements, creating a strong sense that the childlike face was their own. A control group viewed their unaltered adult faces under the same conditions.
After the illusion, participants completed an autobiographical memory interview, recalling events from both their childhood and the past year.
The researchers recorded and quantified the amount of detail that participants provided when recalling their episodic autobiographical memories. These are memories that enable one to mentally relive previous experiences and mentally “time travel” back to events from one’s own past.
The study is the first to show that access to remote memories can be affected by changes to the bodily self and the results found that participants who viewed the childlike version of their face recalled significantly more episodic childhood memories than those who saw their adult face.
The researchers believe the findings offer new insights into how bodily self-perception interacts with memory and could pave the way for new techniques to access previously inaccessible memories, including possibly those from the “childhood amnesia” phase, which is typically before the age of three.
Lead author Dr Utkarsh Gupta conducted the study as part of his PhD at Anglia Ruskin University and is now a Cognitive Neuroscience Research Fellow at the University of North Dakota. Dr Gupta said: “All the events that we remember are not just experiences of the external world, but are also experiences of our body, which is always present.
“We discovered that temporary changes to the bodily self, specifically, embodying a childlike version of one’s own face, can significantly enhance access to childhood memories.
“This might be because the brain encodes bodily information as part of the details of an event. Reintroducing similar bodily cues may help us retrieve those memories, even decades later.”
Senior author Professor Jane Aspell, who leads the Self & Body Lab at Anglia Ruskin University, said: “When our childhood memories were formed, we had a different body. So we wondered: if we could help people experience aspects of that body again, could we help them recall their memories from that time?
“Our findings suggest that the bodily self and autobiographical memory are linked, as temporary changes to bodily experience can facilitate access to remote autobiographical memories.
“These results are really exciting and suggest that further, more sophisticated body illusions could be used to unlock memories from different stages of our lives – perhaps even from early infancy. In the future it may even be possible to adapt the illusion to create interventions that might aid memory recall in people with memory impairments.”
Key Questions Answered:
A: It’s a virtual experience where participants view a live video of their own face altered to look different—in this study, more childlike—creating the sensation that the modified face is their own reflection.
A: Participants who viewed their childlike faces recalled significantly more detailed and vivid childhood memories than those who saw their adult faces.
A: The brain encodes bodily sensations as part of memory, so reintroducing similar physical cues—like seeing a younger version of oneself—may help retrieve memories associated with that earlier body.
About this visual neuroscience and memory research news
Author: Jon Green
Source: Anglia Ruskin University
Contact: Jon Green – Anglia Ruskin University
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Illusory ownership of one’s younger face facilitates access to childhood episodic autobiographical memories” by Utkarsh Gupta et al. Scientific Reports
Abstract
Illusory ownership of one’s younger face facilitates access to childhood episodic autobiographical memories
Our autobiographical memories reflect our personal experiences at specific times in our lives. All life events are experienced while we inhabit our body, raising the question of whether a representation of our bodily self is inherent in our memories.
Here we explored this possibility by investigating if the retrieval of childhood autobiographical memories would be influenced by a body illusion that gives participants the experience of ownership for a ‘child version’ of their own face. 50 neurologically healthy adults were tested in an online enfacement illusion study.
Feelings of ownership and agency for the face were greater during conditions with visuo-motor synchrony than asynchronous conditions. Critically, participants who enfaced (embodied) their child-like face recollected more childhood episodic memory details than those who enfaced their adult face.
No effects on autobiographical semantic memory recollection were found. This finding indicates that there is an interaction between the bodily self and autobiographical memory, showing that temporary changes to the representation and experience of the bodily self impacts access to memory.
