why our brains can form arbitrary memories from seemingly random events and recall them perfectly but its hard to memorize something when you are intentionally trying to memorize it?
In: Biology
Memories are made from connections between large groups of neurons. Those connections are created and organized by your brain, a machine shaped by evolution to help you survive and procreate and also shaped by your genetics and your past experiences.
When you are recalling a random memory, you’re taking advantage of those pre-existing random connections that have already been made and the “proximity” between how different elements of your memories are organized. Just a stroll down the closest foot paths in neurons lane.
In contrast, when you are trying to form a memory on demand, you have to form those connections and make them permanent in your long term memory. The machinery of your brain has to edit and prune connections to create a correct pattern of neuron firings. How is it supposed to do it? How is the functional machinery of the brain suppose to respond to your conscious thought to form a bunch of very specific connections? This is not necessarily corresponding to anything it naturally knows how to do. It may not have had nearly as much practice. So it basically bumbles along, doing things by trial and error (or mostly not doing much at all).
You need to program it to do the right thing. The only way you can do that is by training and practice, and maybe with some tricks that take advantage of our natural evolution driven tendencies. For example, to help them remember, the ancient greeks would place a marble pedestal in their houses as a place where they can “keep” memories. That works because we are built to remember places and geography, so associating a place or an object helps create and recall a memory.
There are a number of these memory techniques one can use. Generally, the theme is, take something that evolution has already programmed our brains to do, and reappropriate it to help us remember more stuff. Over time, you can adapt these programs to become better and better suited to remembering things on demand, and it becomes easier and easier….
At least until you hit middle age, then your memory start to become shit again.
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