what determines what things we remember and what things we forget?
In: Biology
Imagine a large forest.
You have a few favourite trees so you keep visiting those particular trees and in the process paths form. Those paths are well trodden so they get maintained naturally. Something happens and you stop visiting a particular tree. After a while the path gets overgrown and eventually it can’t be seen at all. The tree is still there, but the path is gone.
There might still be some little references to the tree but it would be difficult or even impossible to find the previous path.
Eventually you might find that tree again and rebuild the path allowing you to quickly access it.
The importance of the thing to you.. For example your birthday, you would remember it cause it’s important to you. But what did you dream about 4 days ago, what did you eat last week, etc have no effect on your life. It’s only the important and useful things that u mostly remember
We do. We can conciously keep things in our memories with awareness and repetition. We subconciously remember stuff too, often if something triggers us emotionally it stays with us because that is more likely to be important than minor details (hence things like depression can stunt memories). And remember we don’t always remember things accurately, because our biases affect how we respond to our senses, so sometimes we create false memories or block them to protect ourselves because of emotional trauma. There are lots of factors involved with remembering and the brain can be trained and strengthened just like muscles.
(repost) Your brain in a network of interconnected neurons. The more often a particular cluster of neurons is activated the stronger the pathway. So when you are in love and you are constantly thinking about that person that repetition makes far stronger memories.
Neurons are able to achieve extra ordinary feats of interconnectedness and the more ways that a particular memory is interconnected – like if you see a crash and then hear someone else’s version of events and then look at a recording of the event – the more potential triggers you have for that memory cluster.
Many similar but distinctive memories – like brushing your teeth everyday – are so similar that they fail to trigger specific recall. Hence unique memories – like witnessing a car crash – stand out a lot more.
Memories are experiences that retain an emotional charge, especially if it impacts you deeply enough to affect your behavior, decisions and choices. Likewise you can go back through memories of childhood experiences with adult eyes and help you grow into something different
Context. Something that relates to the memory.
You may have a childhood memory you don’t remember on a daily basis, but suddenly seeing someone fall from a bike can bring that memory to the forefront.
People who “Lose” things all the time (Car keys, wallet, etc) usually don’t have a relevant context to where they placed the item. They drop the item down while on the phone or being distracted by something and you don’t remember.
One memory exercise is to put things in a “place” in your head. They did a study on people who enter competitions to remember various things (The numbers of PI, the order of objects on a table, etc) and that’s one of their tricks. Taking something and putting it in a “Place” in your head. Some of them used a bunch of boxes, others used a room. They would place the numbers or objects in a box or on a table in their head and retrieve it that way. It triggers the brain to have context when the memory is retrieved.
Remembering someones name is a hard one. The best way to give context to that is to repeat their name and look at their face as soon as you hear it. “Hi, I’m Bob” “Bob? Pleasure to meet you” it triggers your brain to give context and remember it (most times) in the future. Of course, repetition helps too. If you haven’t seen them in a long time, it’s harder to remember their name whereas seeing them daily is easier to remember.
Lots of documentaries and YouTube videos on this topic if you’d like to learn more. Both from how neurons fire in the brain to ways to train your brain to remember things better.
What’s really going to have you scratching your noodle is that your most vivid memories of past experiences (the ones you recall the easiest and most often), are likely only a little bit true to what actually happened.
Memories often change over time, as they are affected by new information, and other more recent experiences.
u/cossington did a real good job.
An interesting thing happens when people can’t forget -[Hyperthymesia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymesia) – there was a Russian man in the 20th Century who had this condition. He literally couldn’t forget anything. Died by suicide at the age of 32.
[Jill Price](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/BlessedWithSuck/RealLife) is another example – she has excellent ***autobiographical*** memory. She can remember a university lecture – in that she was there, the date and time and what the class was. But she can’t remember what it was about.
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