How can our brains always remember the first letter of the word we are trying to recall but not the whole word?
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I’m not sure if neuroscience knows enough to answer this question in detail, but my best guess would be that the first letter of a word is being used as a “memory trace”. Basically, you have some memory (in this case a word) stored in a big network of connected brain cells (an engram). If the brain cells are all strongly connected to each other, you will be able to activate the whole network just by activating a few cells (pattern completion).
If your brain is trying to remember a word, it begins by activating a relatively small number of cells that are strongly connected to all of the others in the network (the memory trace). When the recall is successful and you remember the word, the whole network has fully activated. When the recall is not successful, then the activity in the network wasn’t enough to activate the whole memory, so the activity fizzles out without completing the whole pattern (the word). This process involves the hippocampus, the medial temporal lobe, and the prefrontal cortex.
I would also recommend reading more about the visual word form area ([link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_word_form_area)), since activity in this part of the brain seems to be associated with word recognition and recall. It’s possible that the letters on the end of a word are being used as memory traces for encoding whole words in this and/or other parts of the brain. So activating just the cells that represent the first letter might be your brain’s attempt to complete the memory (the whole word) by activating some memory traces.
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