Does the brain really forget skills permanently if you don’t use them?
In: Biology
Barring brain damage your neurons programmed with your conscious and subconscious memories of a particular task are still there. The problem is they’re not linked very strongly anymore with your current thoughts or environmental triggers.
The old saying is it’s like riding a bike – well I can attest to the fact that riding a bike is not like riding a bike – 5 years go by and you’re not exactly a newbie but you’re definitely have some relearning to do. As time goes by the neurons that you use regularly get strengthen and those that you don’t fade by comparison. And it’s likely that as you get on the bike the familiarity of the movement can trigger some of your old neural pathways but it’s also likely that newer memory clusters will keep overriding and essentially blocking access to some of your older memories. This leaves you with an incomplete picture – the result of which you need to make some new neuron pathways and relearn part of the skills involved in riding a bike. Also your muscles and nerves have likely physically altered in that intervening five years so even being able to access your old procedural memories you are still left with some fine tuning to link that to the present condition that your muscles and nerves are in.
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