My take on a question in Quora:

Why do we forget? Why do those with perfect memory not forget anything?

Frankly, you shouldn’t get hung up on this phenomenon which psychologists often call, the “Forgetting Curve”.

According to science. “forgetting” is a natural phenomenon. It’s a vital part of the brain’s natural process of consolidation and diagnostics.

As a matter of fact, “memory” is essentially an active, dynamic process of the brain from our initial selective perceptual capture of sensory impressions of our physical environment, our subsequent processing of what is important from the impressions, particularly in terms of conceptual coherency and personal relevancy, all the way to our so-called long term memory storage.

Throughout this seemingly elaborate process, almost all our 100 billion brain cells are firing on all cylinders.

That’s to say, learning transfer is basically a hardwired bio-electro-chemical activity.

More importantly, it’s always subjective, due to our prevailing expectations, biases, prejudices, fears, hopes and even frustrations.

As I have understood, based on my decades of exploring the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of the human mind, at the physical core of our brain, there is actually no physical entity of “our memories”.

Our recall of “memories” is always reconstructed through the firing synapses of the brain’s vast neural networks.

That’s why as a student, in order to beat this deadly impact of the what is now known as the Ebbinghaus Effect, or better known to most folks as the ‘Forgetting Curve’, we need to do a number of things while learning/studying:

- make sure that we have an interest in learning new things, as interest permeates all learning endeavours;

- make sure that we pay attention while learning/studying;

- make sure that we understand a new concept thoroughly at the very beginning of learning/studying;

make sure that we do a 3 R’s Strategy: Recap, Review and Reinforce, - for deeper processing of what we have just learned to allow better and faster recall when needed, especially during test/exam time;

- make sure we institute a Spaced and Distributed Practice in lesson revisions/rehearsals, within 24 hours, failing which about 80% will be lost; within the next 7 days / next 30 days/ next 6o days/ next 90 days until test/exam time;

- make sure that we remain stress-free and relaxed during learning/studying, and more importantly, before and during test/exam time, as stress is considered a fight-flight response by our reptilian brain, which is one of the major gateways to our learning/thinking brain, or better known as our cerebral cortex;

By the way, there is no such thing as a perfect memory. Only a trained memory.

Hopefully all these cogitations will now make sense to you.