do people forget things completely or are the memories locked away???

i just wanted to know if people REALLY 100% FORGET memories OR are the memories "locked away" untill another time...

im not sure, ill look for some info. but heres an even better thought.

i remember things that never happened. not like fantasies, but actually REMEMBERING things that never happened.

once i found out that half of my memories werent real, the question has been trapped in my mind ever since:

whats real and whats not? and how do i know? am i crazy, or is everyone lying?

messed up,.


here are some links:
Scientific American.com: Early in Paycheck we see the main character get several months' worth of his memories erased by having individual neurons zapped. Is that possible?

JM: No. First of all there is no evidence of memories being stored individually. And even if they were stored in individual neurons, no one would know where they were. What we know an awful lot about are the brain systems that are involved in storing memories. Your memories of this conversation, for example, are stored rather diffusely in the brain. They're not going to be stored in a couple of neurons someplace that anybody could easily identify.

www.impactlab.com...

"Soon, doctors may have just the 'sweet oblivious antidote' that Macbeth so desired: drugs that numb the emotional sting typically associated with our intensely bad memories."

www.cognitiveliberty.org...

Eisenberg and team found that it is the 'dominant' memories that are able to be erased. They exposed rats to flavours, and fish to flashes of light - associated with both good and bad memories. In both species it was possible to show that the dominant memory was the one that could be erased by giving the appropriate drug within a few minutes of the memory's recall.

The discovery is likely to assist in the future development of methods to wipe out unwanted memories, and thus of treating some kinds of psychological trauma, the researchers claim. Such studies on humans, however, are yet to be conducted.

www.ptsdmanual.com...

so far, no its not possible. they are simply overlooked and picke dup when needed. or the link becomes so weak that the memory fades, until provoked.

somememories are stronger than others and can remember things more clearly.

but pretty soon, you probably will be able to zap out memories. like the movie "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind"



[Edited on 3-8-04 by Scat]

Have you never forgotten a person's name, or the answer to a trivia question only to remember it later?

My memory has improved by leaps and bounds since I simply refused to believe that the answer is not somewhere in my head. Accessing data in the junk filled files of our mind is the key to memory. (though the memory of where I put my keys often stumps me)

everything is in there somewhere, just accessing the proper file location can be the problem.

i think I may have forgotten something, but if I try really hard, eventually I do remember it.

I have almost no memory at all. I can't remember what shirt I wore yesterday, or what i ate for breakfast. It's that bad. I think I'm just really forgetful, cause I remember stuff in school, like formulas, but even the formulas I have to study for hours until I can remember them.

Ironically, I have found that trying hard is the worst thing. I need to forget about it to remember it.