ELi5: What happens in your brain when you forget something? and then how does the brain recall forgotten information?

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Bear with me. So for example you forget words in a foreign language or someone’s name… what has happened to the information in your brain? Does it just…disappear after a certain amount of time? Does it get “stored” somewhere else and it just takes longer to retreieve the information after a while? Maybe a bit harder to answer…is there a reason that sometimes the information comes back on its own (you recall it independently) and sometimes you have to relearn things (for example, a foreign language you used to speak and have to learn again after not speaking it for months/years)?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Your brain is like a filing system. Certain files you don’t lose track of, certain files you put in the filing cabinet but forget where, and some files are discarded as not important. When you can’t remember something but it’s in the filing cabinet sometimes you will finally connect the pieces and remember where it was filed.

As far as how that works it’s a bit more complex and not fully understood.

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