Related to this I have often wondered if childhood amnesia is (by a crude analogy) a "format problem". In this analogy, the lion is our younger selves. Perhaps

Related to this I have often wondered if childhood amnesia is (by a crude analogy) a "format problem". In this analogy, the lion is our younger selves. Perhaps our brain changes so much that we cannot understand (or access) what we were thinking or experiencing anymore. If we imagine that long term memories are encoded in a way that they can later be interpreted actively by the structures of the brain, we could expect that major developmental changes in brain function might impact the ability to interpret long term memory formed before the change. Physical trauma, the major reorganisations of infancy and language acquisition all prompt changes in organisation and processing that could be what renders earlier memories inaccessible. This (admittedly hand-wavey) idea seems to mesh well well with the observed details of the phenomenon. Frequently accessed memories may be re-encoded, leading to some continuity. Children themselves experience fairly continuous long-term memory. Types of memories where relevant processing might not have changed as much (smell, visual memory) might be more resilient. We would expect age of language acquisition to play a part. Etc.