Where does memory actually go when you forget?
In: Biology
Depends on what your asking probably.
– Where does a memory go when you forget it and never recall it for the rest of your life?
MadMunky 5b5 probably has best answer for this.
– Where does a memory go when you forget it but remember it unexpectedly some time later?
Think of your mind like a map of a city. Memories are bulidings. The layout of the roads change, and the exact location of buildings may shift over time.
The roads you use the most / memories you think of the most almost never change. The roads you use the least are eventually lost. If a memory is unused long enough, it will be destroyed.
Sometimes you can go a long time without thinking of a particular thing or person. The memory and path to it are still good even if you do not use it. That is how you remember the name of that one guy you have not even thought of 5 years after running into him on the street or hearing his name.
When you are aware of something you cannot remember, like the name of that actor who played Jeordi on Star Trek TNG, or the name of that drummer with one arm, it means the building is still there but you cannot find a path to it. Eventually you find or form a new path to that memory or just google it and recreate the path that way.
END COMMUNICATION
The neurons that make up the memory become other memories.
A memory can be thought of as a lego house where each block is a neuron. The house(memory) exists because the blocks are put together in a certain way. You “forget” when your brain decides the lego house isn’t useful anymore and disassembles it to make other lego structures.
Memories dont go anywhere.
Thoughts and memories are simply chains of neurons that repeat. Memories change over time. Because we can learn new things about them or we actually forget them.
I cant remember my childhood phone number. I can’t recall that i information right now. I can’t seem to piece together the right string to bring that memory up. But, I will remmeber it if someone says it, or shows me an image.
Your brain isnt a set of information, but rather it uses that I formation for other things.
Now true forgetting happens when your brain is damaged. As in those pathways are actually destroyed, or are no longer connected.
When you actually forget something, nothing is missing, your brain just cant drive the same path. Even if it could, you would see it as new info, and not something you remembered.
Maybe I was to in-depth.
It is lost to the inevitable entropy of the universe. Memory just like any information is a certain arrangement of informational bits. When your brain repurposes unused neurons, the old information they encoded is being jumbled up and the information bit arrangements are now for all intents and purposes randomized. This randomization IS the loss of information (and loss of information is entropy).
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