Is there any way of recalling "lost" memories?

Is there any way of recalling “lost” memories? I’ve read that we actually retain everything that happens to us? Is there any method that I can use to recall what happened on a specific day or at least in a certain year?

Someone once told me a really good way to do this.
I’ve forgotten it, though.

There are some years I can hardly remember, not due to illness, or drug use, but due to being in love. I am totally serious.

Use ginko biloba extract, curcumin, or ginger to improve brain circulation; they might help. Bring your brain back alive is the first step.

靜夜思》 床前明月光,疑似桌上飯。 舉頭望明月,低頭吃便當。

Nice!!!

I have the worst memory of anyone I know (as far as I can recall, her her, get it?). Literally, I went to get my teeth cleaned last week and the dentist was surprised to find I had an implant on the x-ray.

“Why didn’t you tell me about your implant?”
“Because I honestly didn’t know I had an implant…”

How do you forget something like that? I’m terrible at recognizing people and I don’t know if that’s because I have a terrible memory or because I may have very mild face-blindness. Regardless, I remember details just fine, like passwords or historical events, or random trivia, but when it comes to my own personal life, I tend to forget things at an astounding rate.

Only one thing has helped me: Taking photos. I have a “photographic memory” in that I take photos of most everything I do and most everywhere I go, and I tend to remember exactly which photo was taken which month and can locate it on my computer probably within a minute. Photography is a very deep thing to me because it’s more than just art – it’s also an external place where I can entrust my memories.

(Sorry if this is way off topic.)

The only way that previous memories are unlocked for me, are by external triggers, usually other people (although it can be random inanimate things: music, video, places - what folk might call déjà vu). My daughter is regularly doing this to me at the moment - “Daddy, do you remember when…”, and I’m thinking “what on earth is she on about?”. Then a few interrogations later, I usually recall the incident she’s describing. Of course sometimes, I can’t remember anything at all, and so I wonder what has happened to the memory there. Is it lost for ever?

Nuit I think you’re right. There are about 4 consecutive years in my life that I can’t recall much of. What I’m doing right now is trying to take myself back to those years by listening to the music of those years, researching news stories I should be able to remember and way things were, who the presidents were, where I was living, working, what car I drove, etc. I guess if I ponder about it long enough, something will come back.

The mind is like a man walking on a beach. Sometimes something washes up on the beach, but it is random. Everything can’t wash up at the same time and there is no guarantee that something that washes up today will ever wash up again.

I’ve had a few memorable dreams that recalled childhood situations in vivid clarity. Those weren’t exactly defining moments of my life, and so I hadn’t mentally reviewed them since childhood times. The sights, smells, sounds were all as clear as though I was actually transported back in time. I don’t believe memories “fade” so long as our brains are still healthy and undamaged. It’s just that we cannot access those memories easily. Trying to “brute force” recall some particular event always fails.

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that hypnotherapy can help recover memories, but strangely no drug therapy has ever proven successful at improving memorization and recall.

[quote=“Hokwongwei”]I have the worst memory of anyone I know (as far as I can recall, her her, get it?). Literally, I went to get my teeth cleaned last week and the dentist was surprised to find I had an implant on the x-ray.

“Why didn’t you tell me about your implant?”
“Because I honestly didn’t know I had an implant…”

How do you forget something like that? I’m terrible at recognizing people and I don’t know if that’s because I have a terrible memory or because I may have very mild face-blindness. Regardless, I remember details just fine, like passwords or historical events, or random trivia, but when it comes to my own personal life, I tend to forget things at an astounding rate.

Only one thing has helped me: Taking photos. I have a “photographic memory” in that I take photos of most everything I do and most everywhere I go, and I tend to remember exactly which photo was taken which month and can locate it on my computer probably within a minute. Photography is a very deep thing to me because it’s more than just art – it’s also an external place where I can entrust my memories.

(Sorry if this is way off topic.)[/quote]

I have a brilliant memory. It’s served me well because people mistake it for intelligence.

When I smell burnt grass, I go right back to 1970 something.

I can’t barely remember my own birthday. I tend to forget names, faces, tasks, where I put this and that. I forget about everything. And then, sometimes, random things are fixed in my mind, sometimes for some reason, sometimes for no apparent reason.

Speaking about weed… I think it never helped me with this problem :smiley:

Thanks to Scientology, I can now recall my previous life as a monkey.

there’s not great evidence that hypnotherapy recalls real memories, but rather created memories. there was a spate of use of hypnotherapy in crime cases, especially in child abuse, in the 90s, but they have kinda dropped out of fashion now after several false convictions were revealed as fantasy and create memories. With the created memories often being made at the suggestion of the therapist who was ‘just so sure that the evil man did it’.

it is very possible for your brain to not lay down a memory properly: i.e., to transition the neural connections from a temporary state (short term memory) to a long term permanent one. That is different from recall, which also varies.

[quote=“urodacus”]there’s not great evidence that hypnotherapy recalls real memories, but rather created memories. there was a spate of use of hypnotherapy in crime cases, especially in child abuse, in the 90s, but they have kinda dropped out of fashion now after several false convictions were revealed as fantasy and create memories. With the created memories often being made at the suggestion of the therapist who was ‘just so sure that the evil man did it’.

it is very possible for your brain to not lay down a memory properly: i.e., to transition the neural connections from a temporary state (short term memory) to a long term permanent one. That is different from recall, which also varies.[/quote]

True, but you know that we all rebuild, remake, old memories all the time… Also, a recent research estates that people with very good memory abilities tend to create fake memories more than average.

Hell yeah! The fun part is implanting them in others. People trust you more if you recall information easily. If you can memorise maps or poetry or legislation or studies, people assume any information you give them is correct. Halo effect.

Memory is creation of narratives from scattered bits of information, so it makes sense that we fantasists are good at it.

Chimps have larger short-term memories than humans. Is suggest that a smaller short-term memory is an evolutionary advantage.

:notworthy: :roflmao:

This brings back memories:
youtube.com/watch?v=0D31x3TAVpU