[] How does the brain repress memories and not let people remember entire parts of their lives?

Question

[] How does the brain repress memories and not let people remember entire parts of their lives?

In: Other

Answer 1

Memories aren’t like video recordings that you can rewatch, with the file being exactly representative of what you recorded every time you open it.

A memory is more like 1000s of little Christmas lights that activate into a recognisable ‘image’ when you push the button.

Following that analogy, the brain can ‘disconnect’ the lights from the electricity so it doesn’t form the lightshow when you push the button. Or the brain didn’t write down how the lights were arranged at the time so it doesn’t know how to put them back together. Or it messed up the arrangement or wiring so it either looks like something else or only part of it lights up giving an incomplete image.