Paul McCartney says he remembers his own birth; scientists doubt it

Mixed · 2Sir Paul McCartney, 84, said on US actress Amy Poehler's Good Hang podcast that he feels he can remember being born in 1942. 1 2 Left · 1Asked for his first memory, he said he was born at Walton Hospital in Liverpool and recalled "white tiles, very hygienic white tiles and chrome instruments and a clanging", because he was a forceps birth: "They had to pull me out." 1 Mixed · 2He conceded the memory might not be real, saying "I don't know if it's true." 1 2

Left · 1The Daily Mirror noted that he was born on 18 June at the hospital where his mother Mary qualified as a nurse and later worked as an on-call midwife. 1 Right · 1The Daily Mail added that he also recalled the doctor's unusual hairstyle, a detail the Mirror's account does not mention. 2 Left · 1In the same interview, as the Mirror reported, he said he nearly did not go into music because he hesitated to leave a £7.15-a-week coil-winding job in a factory, after John Lennon and George Harrison arrived to say they had a gig at the Cavern Club. 1

Right · 1The Mail reported that memory researchers consider a genuine memory of birth almost certainly impossible because of 'infantile amnesia', which leaves most adults unable to recall events from before about age three. 2 Right · 1Rutgers University psychologist Vanessa LoBue said memories claimed from before age two or three may have been constructed from someone else's retelling. 2 Right · 1Dr Kaori Ikeda of the Australian Brain Alliance said a newborn's brain is a quarter of adult size and reaches three-quarters by age two, and that rapid neuron growth may disrupt existing memory networks; Basel neuroscientist Flavio Donato called the pattern a 'paradox'. 2

Right · 1The Mail said the likelier explanation is that McCartney's brain has woven fragments of stories, family memories and imagination into a scene that feels real, though McCartney may sincerely believe it. 2