Does anyone really remember their birth? Experts give verdict after Terrence Howard makes surprising claims on Joe Rogan's podcast

Experts have dismissed the celebrity's claim that she has an amazing memory of her childhood experiences, including being in the womb.

Empire actor Terrence Howard said in an interview on Joe Rogan's podcast that he remembers the entire “nine months” he was in the womb, and even remembers being “squeezed” and “frustrated.” He declared that he was there.[ing] Panic during my own birth.

Actor Nicolas Cage made similar claims earlier this month.

About 100 people have a condition that leaves them with memories like photographs from their childhood, but all four experts DailyMail.com spoke to said it was “impossible” to remember being in the womb or being born. ” he said.

“Human babies are neurologically underdeveloped and have no memories,” Robert Friedland, a professor of neurology at the University of Louisville, told DailyMail.com.

“The brain's memory system doesn't work well until a few years old,” he added.

Howard claimed to remember being in the womb for “probably six months.”

“And I was like, 'All right, don't forget I'm here, don't forget, don't forget, don't forget,'” he told Joe Rogan.

He went on to say: “You go to sleep. You wake up again. Now something is moving in front of you and you think, “Oh, that's my friend.''

“But I had a different name for it. I didn't know it was my hand.”

“Do you remember coming out?” Logan asked, surprised.

“I remember being squeezed. You want to panic,” Howard replied.

“But the rush of serotonin and dopamine makes you feel relaxed and you go right back to sleep.

“And I remember when I was born,” he added, claiming he also remembers being circumcised.

But the reality is that the majority of us don't remember anything before the age of three, Dr. Dung Trinh, a California internist and chief executive of the Health Brain Clinic, told DailyMail.com .

Dr. Trinh said this is due to something called “infantile amnesia,” in which most of the child's previous memories are lost.

“When we are born, our brains are probably one-fourth the size of adult brains,” Dr. Trinh says.

As the brain develops, new brain cells are produced at a rapid rate, destroying and overwriting previous memories.

Most of our memories are formed and stored in the hippocampus.

“At birth, the hippocampus is not yet fully developed,” Dr. Trinh said, meaning that it cannot perform the important function of recalling memories until several years later.

As for remembering being in the womb, “certainly that's not an example I've encountered or heard of,” he said.

Other brain regions, such as the prefrontal cortex, are also involved in memory, says Dr. Aaron Ruben, a neuropsychologist and doctoral candidate at Duke University.

Like the hippocampus, “this too is not fully developed to support storage and retrieval of memories for several years,” he told DailyMail.com.

Dr. Trinh says the amygdala, the brain structure for emotional memory, is more developed than the structure for episodic memory.

“Maybe it's possible to remember certain emotions associated with your birth, but again, that's rare,” he says.

This means that an emotionally significant event, like a traumatic birth, can influence a child's behavior later in life, even though they may not remember the event itself, Dr Trinh said.

But he added that it's highly unlikely that they would remember anything that happened in the womb.

Actor Nicolas Cage also recalled seeing “faces in the dark” when he was in his mother's womb, when asked about his childhood memories on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert earlier this month. he claimed.

The Hollywood star explained, “I know this sounds pretty surreal and I don't know if it's real or not, but sometimes I wonder if I could go back to being in the womb and feel like I could see faces in the dark or something.”

“I know it sounds very abstract, but somehow it seems like something that probably actually happened.”

Dr. Reuben was not convinced.

“Although learning occurs very early, potentially in utero, the ability to consciously recall sights, sounds and experiences later in life relies on a mature hippocampus,” which newborns do not have.

Highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM) is the ability to accurately remember details of everyday experiences that occurred over the past decades.

This condition was only discovered in 2000 and is still poorly understood.

Becky Sherlock, 34, Australia's only known case of HSAM, claims she remembers the day she was born and the “intense curiosity” she felt as a newborn. There is.

“I remember what I think was when I was born and I found myself wrapped in a blanket and I had a tag cut off my ankle,” she told 60 Minutes Australia.

“Of course you can't prove it 100% to skeptics,” she said.

“I was very curious. When I was a baby, I didn't even know the word curiosity, but I wanted to know about everything. I think I was about 5,000 percent more curious than I am now.”

Dr. Trinh said this is “more achievable.” “The brain clearly develops better after birth than in the womb. I think that's rare, but probably possible.”

Another argument for why we can't remember our birth is that autobiographical memory requires a sense of self, which doesn't develop until about age two.

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“When we're first born, we have no idea what's going on,” Dr. Trinh says.

“At the stage when autobiographical memories are created, we have not yet developed any language processing skills or sense of self,” added Dr. Keith Vossell, a neurologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr. Vossel said Howard and Cage may instead be recalling “false memories” from “vivid dreams.”

“Dreaming can also create false memories,” he says. “Sleep is important for consolidating new memories, so it's also the time when we create new false memories.

“He may be remembering vivid dreams he had in the past and creating a reality around them. There are reports that that could happen,” Dr. Vossel added.

Cage admitted, “I don't even know if I remember being in the womb.”

Dr. Ruben told DailyMail.com:

“Essentially, we can have very vivid memories of things that never happened; all we have to do is imagine them often enough.”

Vossel said the memories of being in the womb may feel real to Howard and Cage because “they've lived it in their minds so many times.

“It's essentially a memory that feels real to them. And they've experienced it in their minds over and over again. And it becomes real and true to them.”

Perhaps Howard and Cage want to believe they remember their births, or perhaps they want to impress interviewers and fans with their unusual experience.

'[Wanting to sound interesting] It can be a motivating factor,” Dr. Vossel said.

Dr Trinh said confirmation bias – the tendency to search for or recall information in a way that confirms one's prior beliefs – was “certainly possible” in Howard and Cage's memories of their prenatal experiences.

“We can't really prove either, because none of us was present at anyone's birth, nor do we remember our own.”