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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The brain “knows things” by connections. A simple example is probably song lyrics – people generally know the verse lyrics in order, but it’s hard to pull specific lines out of order for most. Similarly, the brain and those connections are like a muscle, where frequent and repeated use helps.
Forgetting something means the connection is weak for some reason and just straight up isn’t happening. Remembering later means the connection happened differently. If I forgot to water the garden, maybe if I just slowed down I finally was able to remember it because my brain wasn’t as busy/stressed, or maybe I saw a flower garden on TV, or maybe I saw the hose at the gas pump.
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