I’m talking about those things that you normally know but may forget momentarily. It’s like your brain draws a blank or can’t access the info. What causes that when it happens?
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Everyone is talking about neural pathways eroding over time, but that doesn’t explain why we “draw blanks” on information that isn’t very old.
In addition to neurons that activate various pathways in the brain, we also have countless **inhibitory neurons** that deactivate various pathways.
When someone asks what your cat’s name is, you don’t want to be flooded with images of every cat you’ve ever seen. Inhibitory neurons block the pathways that lead to irrelevant cats. This happens immediately, such that your brain can go directly to the cat you were asked about.
This process can malfunction, causing the correct pathway to become blocked by inhibitory neurons. The harder you try to recall the information, the harder the pathway gets blocked. Once you change topics and stop trying to recall that specific info, the inhibitory neurons turn off and then you can easily access the information again.
Think of it like one of those claw games at the fun fair. The more ‘hooks’ in a prize, the easier it is to grab
High frequency words have lots of ‘hooks’ because we use them all the time
Names are low-frequency items (think how often you use a name compared to other words)
Less used items have weaker representations or fewer ‘hooks’
And so are harder to ‘grab’
This could help understand and also look up this in relation to epilepsy
The analogy I heard that I like is the “local minimum” problem. The word you are looking for is the lowest point on the “landscape” of all the words. The problem is you get stuck in a valley- it isn’t the lowest point but every direction you try to hop is “up” so you don’t think that is the right direction and go back into the valley. The solution is to make a bigger hop and try to get out of the valley.
I don’t really have an answer but I did this University study once for ADHD and they said when I’m put on the spot, something along the lines there tends to be lesser oxygen going to my brain as compared to the average person. This is possibly related?
I’m not a doctor so I just putting out what I understood from the doctor, he put so headgear on me that looked kind of like professor x’s cerebum lol.
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Memory kind of works like video encoding. Your brain sets ‘highlights’ as kind of points of reference and the rest is actually deleted and when you ‘remember’ stuff your brain is actually reconstructing the events by connecting the highlights it saved (someone else here called these constructed connections ‘memory strings’) and then matching information to that reconstruction.
This is why you remember your vacation so vividly but can’t even remember what the colour of the car next to you this morning. Vacation is a lot of new ‘highlightworthy’ points your brain can work with while your daily commute to work essentially has next to none so your brain saves almost nothing. It’s also how you can have ‘false memories’ if your brain uses events that logically make sense connecting highlight points but didn’t actually happen.
When you draw a blank on a name your brain looks for context in which you heard the name (matching sensory input) and then reconstruct the name from there. It’s why you are unlikely to blank on your own or your moms name cause there are PLENTY of events where the name is right at the center of some ‘highlights’ while your mates new girlfriends name only came up in some mundane introduction round far removed from a lot of highlights so it’s a lot of work to reconstruct the situation and then recall the name from that.
Memory is compliacted but fun 😉
I don’t remember where I learned this trick and it sounds like bullshit but I swear it works. When you can’t remember something like this, imagine yourself in a small office in your brain. In that office is a guy who does whatever you ask of him. Imagine yourself telling him to go get that information you can’t remember and bring it to you. Then forget all about it and carry on with your day.
Sometime in the next 24 hours or so, that piece of info will just pop into your head unexpectedly.
Again, no idea why this works but it does.
Could somebody explain what is happening when we use a different name by mistake? I’m thinking for example when a grandma mixes all of her grandchildren names.
Most functions in your brain most memories are linked by similar content. That’s why your dad or mother keeps bringing up the same story over and over and over and over and over again. It’s because they have tons of memories linking to those same stories. Conversely, if you don’t have a memory that links their name to their face you will have a hard time remembering their name.
Some people will take a picture of someone’s face using their phone and then will give that picture the name of the person. They never have to look at the picture again because when they try to remember the person’s name by their face, they will remember taking that picture.
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