Sometimes it takes me to backtrack my thought process until I remember, sometimes it randomly comes back. Sometimes it doesn’t. Why?
In: Biology
It’s like when you lose your keys. You know they’re gone, but you can’t find them. Your brain knows it’s missing something, but it can’t pinpoint what it is.
If the memory is inside a box, your brain can see the box and know there is something, but not be able to open it for a while to see what’s inside. When you’re retracing your steps, you are re-making more connections and hopefully one of those opens the box.
It’s similar when you see someone you met previously. The face (image) is stored in one box and the name in another box. You recognise the face, so you know that you know their name but you can’t open the other box. Only once both memories are firmly set can you open both boxes.
It has the reference to it but can’t find the actual item. Why that is or how our brains’ RAM and storage works is still largely a mystery.
This is a slightly above ELI5 answer (maybe more ELI12):
An average human has 86 billion neurons (brain cells), which between them form 100 trillion connections. Memory, and all other brain functions, exists as a complex interaction of billions of these neurons.
Let’s say you leave your car keys in a drawer instead of the table you normally put them on. Your “memory” of car keys involves what a car is, what a key is, what car those specific car keys go to, how a key works, what other keys are on that key ring, where those keys normally are, how those keys feel, how they smell, and dozens of other small connections between those keys and other memories/knowledge of them you have.
Sometimes a short term memory, like dropping your keys in a drawer, only make one or two connections. Sometimes those specific memories and connections don’t trigger until we have a strong enough stimuli to activate it. With short term memory that wasn’t deeply ingrained to have made a lot of connections, you have to reactivate stimuli strong enough to activate that one memory. So retracing your steps precisely might be that one connection you have left to that one specific memory.
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