Why can you temporarily forget stuff? If the memory is gone, why isn’t it just gone forever?
In: Biology
Your brain temporarily “forgets” basically everything you know all the time. It is as if your brain “loads” the information it thinks is relevant at the time and that’s it. This makes sense. After all, you do not need to get distracted by the algebra lesson you had in high school while you’re talking to someone about whether the chicken you just ate was worth ten dollars.
Your brain is an interlocking web of doorways. Just because you temporarily forget the opening doesn’t mean you forget the closing or the interlocking pathway between them. Everything is a firing of synapses that connects thoughts/feelings/emotions between experiences. These experiences shape your conclusions/assumptions and form the beliefs that define you. You can forget WHY your the way you are but you’ll never forget WHO you are.
Your brain is like a snowy mountain, and every thought is a sledge you send down. The more often you think of something the deeper the tracks that will be left. Now if some tracks get too deep you will slide into them even if you dont intent to. If ypu think about it, not being able to think of something always feels like there is something in the way.bas if you know what youvwant to think, but just cant.
Brains do not store information in an understandable, predictable, and organized manner that computer hard drives do. Brains work as a series of pathways being activated in certain orders/areas, often triggered by some kind of stimuli.
When a computer forgets something, it means that the actual information is gone because the computer knows exactly how to get there.
When a brain forgets something it didn’t lose the information, it just doesn’t know how to get to it. Then some sight, phrase, smell, sound, etc. will trigger pathways and the memory will resurface.
There is simply just too much information for the brain to have everything “active” at once.
Neuropsychologists talk about differences between at least three different types of memory recall, and some are easier than others. It is possible that when you’re using a more difficult method you may not be able to retrieve a memory, but when you are able to use an alternative method it may be easier.
Specifically, *free recall* is the most difficult. Imagine if I asked you to recall 16 items of a shopping list for example.
An easier method is *cued-recall*. Imagine if I then asked you to recall all the items on your shopping list that were fruits, then all the ones that were items of clothing, then the ones that are tools, for example. This is easier than free recall. The semantic category acts as a cue that helps you remember the items in that category.
Even easier is *recognition*. Imagine if I then asked you, “Which of these was on your shopping list: An apple or a banana?” Recognition is easiest of the three.
Neuropsychologists can distinguish between problems with encoding (i.e., putting the memory in) versus retrieval (i.e., getting the memory out) by looking at the differences between these three. For example, if your recognition is *way* better than your free recall, it suggests that the memory is being encoded, but there are difficulties with retrieval.
(This example is based on a particular memory test used by clinical neuropsychologists called the California Verbal Learning Test).
Source: Am a clinical psychologist who wrote both my Honours and Masters theses in clinical neuropsychology of schizophrenia.
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