What is the psychology behind forgetting something? How does the brain suddenly remember something you hadn’t thought about in years?
In: Biology
Your brain doesn’t work like a computer or filing cabinet where memories are stored neatly in a row. Instead, when you try to remember something your brain tries to rebuild the memory. A memory is stored as a web of neurons with connections between them. When your brain experiences something, the neurons flare up in a pattern. Each time those neurons flare, the connections between them get stronger, which is why you remember things more easily when you’ve repeated them over and over. Of course this doesn’t work perfectly, and your brain can create incorrect connections where they don’t belong, or the connections themselves can degrade if they aren’t flared for a long time.
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