Why do we never lose certain skills we have learned, even if we haven’t practiced them for a long time. like for example riding a bicycle, and we lose some, like a new language we learned 10 years ago but can’t remember anything about it now?
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As mentioned before, it’s very much because of muscle memory. Bicycling requires your whole body and a lot of instincts to get the hang of it, where as languages do not to the same extent.
However, I’d like to point out that after learning a language, you can pick up the pronounciation up rather quickly even after a long time, as pronounciation requires muscle memory as well.
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When I was in college I took French class. I had taken some high school Spanish but I really struggled in the class, I would study but still get barely passing grades. So when my first French test came I studied my butt off. I took the test and breezed through it, all the answers came to me so easily. The next day I went to class and I’d gotten a zero. Every single answer I’d given was in Spanish, a language I can not now or could not then consciously speak. I was allowed to retake the test only because every answer had been the correct word, just the wrong language.
Brains are weird but knowledge is never really gone. It’s just the neural pathway you use to recall and regularly access that info that’s atrophied over time. If you’re further interested, I suggest looking into neuro elasticity. But tldr brains need exercise to be able to do all the amazing things it can do regularly. They’re super adaptive incredible machines, but like any machine theyll back burner or eventually stop unnecessary tasks to conserve load for necessary / more frequently used tasks.
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Not a psychologist, but I took a minor course in psychology.
Basically, your brain has two broad types of memory:
1) Procedural:
This includes skills, like riding a bike, driving a car, and so on.
2) Declarative:
Facts, figures, and about everything else. This does “erode” over time, that is, more relevant information at the time overtakes something learned in the past.
To answer your question:
Procedural memory is tied to motor skills and doesn’t get “replaced” (bit of a misnomer) unlike declarative memory. So the language is still there, it just takes time and eventually pops up, whilst you’ll never forget how to ride a bike.
Hope this helped.
EDIT: Thank you for the upvotes and especially u/thelostecholar for the award. Glad I could help out a little.
EDIT 2: Well, I’m glad this is my most upvoted comment. Thank you u/jaywiz8 and u/-SNUG- for the awards, and the rest of you awesome people for continuing an awesome discussion. It’s lovely.
It’s because of something called procedural memory and the activation of mirror neurons. The neural process for learning to ride a bike is stored in procedural memory areas of the brain. There are two ways to learn things that require procedural memory. The first way is to perform the action yourself, such as riding a bike over and over and over and over again. The second way to learn is to watch someone else do the same activity such as riding a bike. Fmri research has shown that the same areas of the brain are activated when a person rides a bike and also when a person watches someone else ride a bike. Things that require procedural memory include getting dressed, brushing teeth, walking, playing sports, playing an instrument, using a drill gun and on and on. So when we walk about our days and watch other people do things like ride a bike the mirror neurons activate and we in a virtual sense in our brain practice riding a bike. So if we compare how many times we see someone else doing something that requires procedural memory versus how many times we practice a foreign language, for most of us the amount of opportunities in a day to see things that require procedural memory is vastly higher. Thus, because of our years of virtual practice watching another person riding a bike, we are able to quickly “remember” how to ride a bike and perform it at a similar competence level within a short time like 30 to 60 seconds.
The truth is that we never really forget anything, we just fail to retrieve the information. It’s like a path in a forest. A well-trodden path is easy to spot and easy to follow, you can get to your destination easily. A path that’s rarely used will get overgrown and become difficult to navigate. However, the path is still there, and if you start using it again you’ll find it easier than trying to make a brand new path.
If you put your mind to learning that language you “forgot”, you’d actually find you had a much easier time learning it again than you had the first time. The information is already there, you just need to find the path again.
Fact type memories (like someone’s birthday) and skill type memories (like how to walk) are stored in different ways in different parts of the brain. Fact type memories generally need to be updated, overwritten, rewritten, etc so they are generally more likely to decay. Skill memories that don’t change much can be stored in the far more permanent way as it’s much less likely you’ll need to relearn how to walk when compared to a birthday.
Even then, the things you “forget” are mostly thought to be still there, you just can’t access them as easily.
Different types of skills are stored in different parts of the brain. Alzheimer’s patients can lose their ability to speak or to comprehend what’s being spoken to them, yet they can still recall full lyrics to songs they’ve known their whole lives (yet for less time than how to speak). This is because the sounds of the words are what they are recalling with the song lyrics and not so much their meaning.
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