The Expanding Boundaries of Memory

In psychology, traditional studies have sought the boundaries of memory in
specific brain structures thought to mark the beginning and limits of memory. Recent discoveries in
neuroscience suggest new brain processes and chronologies relevant to memory. Advances in brain research
and instrumentation have clarified some memory pathways and permitted direct observation of the living brain
but these studies obscure the real boundaries of memory. A major breech of boundaries has come with
verification of birth memories of children and adults. Superb memory abilities support a host of newly
appreciated cognitive talents of newborns. Memory boundaries are enormously expanded by evidence of
prenatal memory, gestation memory, and past-life memory which require radically different explanations.
Evidence from the farther reaches of memory, accessed in non-ordinary states of consciousness, indicates that
storage of memory is outside the bodybrain. In this perspective, memory appears to be an innate and ageless
endowment of human consciousness. Psychologists and neurologists used to know the boundaries of memory.
Few people could remember anything before age 3, probably because they had too little cortex and no
language. Intelligence was not expected of the unborn, and even newborns were called a “brainstem
preparation” obviously not equipped for perception and memory. Anything that seemed like memory was called
a “fantasy.” In medicine, brain and body were different realms.