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?

Question

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

Answer 1

Your brain is always processing and remembering information. In the world, there are sometimes memory cues that trigger those memories – smell is particularly known for this. In contrast, when trying to remember something complex, there aren’t really natural memory cues outside of “I need to remember this” when it comes time to actually remember it. Plus, what you’re trying to remember is much more concrete and precise, as opposed to the incomplete memories or feelings of “random events.”

Also, your arbitrary memories probably aren’t actually perfectly recalled even if you feel like they are – memories are heavily influenced by cues and reprocessed at the time of retrieval 🙂