Seeing yourself as a child can unlock lost memories

We often think memory lives in the mind. But what if part of it lives in the body? A new study from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) suggests that changing how we see ourselves – even for a moment – can help us reach childhood memories we thought were gone.

The researchers found that adults could recall early memories more vividly after briefly seeing a childlike version of their own face. It’s a strange but simple trick: look at a younger you, and your mind begins to remember like one.

Seeing a younger you

Fifty adults joined the experiment. Each sat before a screen showing a live video of their face. For some, software transformed that face into a childlike version.

As the person moved, the image moved too, matching every tilt and turn. That perfect synchrony made the illusion convincing – the participants began to feel that the child on the screen was truly them.

Afterward, they spoke about memories from childhood and from the past year. Those who saw their younger faces gave richer, more emotional childhood recollections. The others – who saw their adult faces – remembered fewer details.

The effect appeared only for childhood memories, suggesting the illusion worked by awakening old, body-tied experiences.

How the body holds memory

Our body does not just carry us through life. It records sensations, movements, even emotions that mark our experiences. That record shapes how memory works. When the body’s signals change, the mind’s access to stored moments can shift.

“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,” noted Dr. Utkarsh Gupta, who led the research.

“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.”

Dr. Gupta’s words capture the study’s central idea: memory is not only mental. The brain links it to how we felt in our own skin at that time.

Sight, touch, and movement

The researchers call this “bodily self-consciousness” – our built-in sense of owning and controlling our body. It combines three parts: body ownership, agency (feeling in control), and self-location (knowing where we are). The brain builds these through sight, touch, and movement.

Changing those inputs can confuse or reshape that sense of self. Past virtual-reality studies have shown that such body illusions alter how people encode and recall events. For instance, those who viewed events from an “out-of-body” perspective later remembered them less clearly.

The new study went further. Instead of changing the whole body, it focused on the face – the most personal part of identity. Seeing a younger version of oneself created a feeling of embodiment that reconnected the mind with its early self.

What revives childhood memory

The illusion did not improve factual recall – like names or places – but it did enhance vivid, episodic memories. These are the memories that let us “re-live” an event.

Participants described not just what happened but how it felt: the setting, the weather, the emotions.

Brain theories such as Multiple Trace Theory help explain this. Each memory trace holds fragments of bodily information from the original moment. The hippocampus stores those fragments along with sights and sounds.

Seeing one’s younger face may reactivate that neural pattern, bringing those long-stored sensations back into awareness.

Beyond the body illusion

Could the effect simply be psychological priming – seeing a child and thinking of childhood? The researchers don’t think so.

The improvement appeared only in vivid recollection, not factual memory. That pattern points to embodiment, not suggestion.

It’s possible that the illusion tapped into how the brain physically encodes lived experience. Our bodies serve as entry points to our past. Recreating the feel of our younger self might help the brain reopen closed memory networks.

New ways to reconnect

Professor Jane Aspell, who leads the Self & Body Lab at ARU, noted that 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?”

This curiosity drives a larger vision. Future research could refine these illusions with more realistic childlike images, even AI-generated ones.

In time, such tools might help people struggling with memory loss or trauma reconnect with parts of their lives once thought unreachable.

Remembering childhood memories

Memory depends on context. The smell of an old home, the sound of rain, or even the weight of smaller hands – all these cues open forgotten doors. This study shows that the body itself is one of those keys.

“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,” said Professor Aspell.

The discovery reminds us that memory is not a fixed archive. It shifts with how we see ourselves – literally. Sometimes, to remember who we were, we must first become that person again, if only for a moment.

The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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