how can our brains remember that we forgot something, but it can’t remember what we forgot
In: Biology
Imagine your brain is a filing cabinet. When you ‘recall’ something your subconscious tells your brain to go retrieve the phone number file and look up what grandmas number is. Now sometimes we truly “forget” something. Information we “knew” at some point, but never used so it didn’t stick and now you aren’t even aware you ever ‘knew’ it. This would be like if you completely misplaced or lost a file from the cabinet. A year or so later, there is no evidence it was ever in the cabinet, no way to recall it, it might as well have never existed. If you scan through the cabinet, you’ll see no sign it ever was there. But when we know we know something, but struggle to recall it, it’s more like one of the drawers of the filing cabinets is stuck and can’t be opened for some reason. You KNOW you have grandmas phone number in a file. And the file cabinet index says it will be filed in the third drawer down in Folder A46. But the damn drawer is stuck again and you…. Just…. Can’t … Get to it.
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