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Why can’t I remember what I did 5 seconds ago?

Hang, on – you just left the house, but did you lock the door? When it comes to these habitual behaviours, your body knows what to do without the need for conscious thought. The brain no longer encodes the details of a repeated behaviour, so while you remember how to lock the door, there’s no specific memory of when you last did it.

This ability to autopilot can be beneficial, freeing up attention for more important things. The danger comes when this “habit memory” takes over when it isn’t supposed to, which can lead to mistakes like forgetting to drop a child off and .ÌýYvaine Ye

Master your memory

The truth about memory is far more elaborate than we previously thought. Here’s your guide to how it really works

Why can’t we remember being babies?

Infants are constantly learning, but . That’s because parts of the brain critical for longer-term memory are still immature. So babies can form memories – a how to do certain tasks for up to three weeks – but holding onto them is tricky.

As the brain begins to mature, that neural machinery gets more efficient and memories start to stick – until the age of 7, when there’s a sudden dip. Children recall far more about earlier events in their lives when asked . This sudden erasure, known as “childhood amnesia” may be down to pruning, the…