Memories are like sparks that smolder under the ashes, but when you unfold them, they come alive again and again, Goethe once said. Without memory, the ability to learn would also be meaningless, as we would not be able to remember what we learn. And if you think that the memories in our brain are stored as data in the working memory or on the hard disk, you are wrong, because while the computer stores information in specific places, the brain stores fragments of the memory of the same thing at different ends. And when we recall a memory, nerve impulses from individual parts of the brain assemble these fragments of memories into a meaningful whole. But why do we (re)store some memories, while others are swallowed up by a "black hole"?
A memory most often distinguished according to its duration. The most common division is the division into sensory, short-term and long-term, which already gives us a partial answer to the question posed earlier. And while it is sensory memory a direct sequence of stimuli that come as if on a conveyor belt and are therefore rejected by a large part, while those who survive the first "test" finish in the waiting room, which we call short-term memory. It carries all the data that we are thinking about and are aware of at the moment, just as RAM helps the processor, associations help this type of memory. It is a kind of post office for information, which after processing and after it is no longer needed, it sends to long term memory.
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But also short-term memory (eg knowing phone numbers by heart) is not always on the way to long-term. You can find out why by watching the educational video that you popularly explains how our memory works and why we forget things.
