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

The brains memory “creator” the hippocampus is literally attached to the emotional center of the brain, the amygdala. The amygdala “tags” the memory in the hippocampus with certain emotions and sensations, so when the memory is stored in the brain it has that tag. When you smell, hear, etc. a sound similar to the tag that the amygdala gave its causes the memory to pop up.