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I can't just be me ... but my memory is weird.
Allow me to explain: yesterday I was out with the wife at a place called Dinefwr: it's an 800 acre Estate that is run by the UK National Trust as a "living museum", and they allow - nay, encourage - you to touch the exhibits. So you can feel the fabrics, try on the hats, sit on the furniture, feel the weight of a chain mail shirt. You can open drawers and check out the dovetails, play the piano, whatever - except for one are that is roped off as the Stuffed Ox Head in the Stockman's Office was preserved with Arsenic and they don't want dead visitors.
But ... we went by coach as part of a group she's involved in, and I realised that we camped not far from it for a week back in the nineties. And I could remember the roads. Really clearly: "It dips here, then rises, at the peak it bends sharply to the left (watch out for a bump near the apex), then down to a fast left-right-left to the short straight before ... "
I'm sure you know the type, particularly if you ride motorcycles. But it was about twenty years ago that I last rode there, so why would my memory recall it so clearly? I have difficulty getting it to remember phone numbers and dates, faces and names, but it happily stores complete GPS info for a road I rode on maybe 7 or 14 times 20 years ago?
Does this happen to anyone else, or is it just me?
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Happens to me all the time. I don't know the scientific term for it but I just call it "getting old". 
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The first thing would be that the brain does not store images or something as clumsy. It stores a description which can later be used to reconstruct the original information, with interesting ways to fill in the blanks where information got lost in some way.
It could be as simple as that this particular impression lent itself well to this approach or that 'filling in the blanks' worked very well, giving you an impression similar to a deja vu.
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CodeWraith wrote: It stores a description which can later be used to reconstruct the original information
reference required for that.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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I can't tell you where I once read that, but this may help.[^]
Quote: Unlike short-term memory (which relies mostly on an acoustic, and to a lesser extent a visual, code for storing information), long-term memory encodes information for storage semantically (i.e. based on meaning and association).
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Your memory of that reference is a classic example of filling in the blanks.
(None of this ever happened, including this)
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Happens to me seeing movies last seen as child. Pictures, stories are quite different from my memory, some not even recognizable now, because that was I "seen" as child not what I "see" now as adult.
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I think a micro-wormhole opened in your brain and took your memories back to that time.
I'm sure there's some scientific proof around somewhere about this topic. 
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V. wrote: micro-wormhole opened tapeworm in your brain
FTFY. Don't come with science fiction when there is a very natural explanation. 
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My memory is also going. I had to look up FTFY.
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SNAFU
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I have to look up FTFY every single time. It's one of those acronyms that just won't "take" in my brain.
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A weird quirk of the human brain I suppose. It's geared more towards remembering "natural" things than abstractions such as numbers. I recently heard a song I hadn't heard in over 10 years and knew every lyric, the pitch, and timing. Now if only I could remember names and dates that well 
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Yeah, that's long term vs short term memory.
Cheers,
विक्रम
"We have already been through this, I am not going to repeat myself." - fat_boy, in a global warming thread
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Not sure - forgot to take my memory tablet this morning.
Regards,
Rob Philpott.
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But you remembered that you had forgotten to take the tablet to stop you forgetting. 
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As people with dementia progress, long term memory remains long after short term memory fails. Have been associated with several, they can recite things from the past even when they can't carry on a normal conversation. I suspect that it is part of the aging process for our brains.
Me? I just have CRS= Can't Remember, er, um "Stuff" 
Arguing with a woman is like reading the Software License Agreement. In the end, you ignore everything and click "I agree".
Anonymous
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Yes it happens sometimes. It is depending on how the deep the impression or feelings were and how many other impressions (or feelings or informations) of the same kind had overwritten it.
I call it "information overflow" and it is like a limited cache where unimportant informations got deleted after some newer or hotter stuff. 
Press F1 for help or google it.
Greetings from Germany
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Are you sure you are not confusing this with the browser cache?
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OriginalGriff wrote: Does this happen to anyone else, or is it just me?
Movement and Learning
Why Movement is Essential in Early Childhood - The Atlantic
OriginalGriff wrote: I have difficulty getting it to remember phone numbers and dates,
As an experiment, when trying to memorize something particularly abstract like a phone number, try doing some simple physical movement for a minute or so -- foot stomping, clapping to the pattern of the number, whatever, and see how that affects your ability to remember the number later.
OriginalGriff wrote: faces and names
I find this harder -- my visual memory is weird. I can recognize a face, but I can't describe a face. For me, I realized it's a lack of deep observation -- hair color and style, eye color, the line of the cheek and jaw bones, etc. Same with names -- when I took a Dale Carnegie class on How to Win Friends and Influence People it really helped to associate the name with another mnemonic (where did the spelling of that word come from???) as well as a physical activity.
Marc
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Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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This is also sideways related to a thing called The Memory Palace or Method of loci - Wikipedia[^] .
Isn't it interesting that you can remember how to walk through a house you lived in as a child and many buildings you may have visited even though it may have been 20 years ago since you were there.
For some reason our minds do memorize spatially.
The Memory Palace system uses this fact as a way to store things you want to remember.
I've listened to hundreds of books as I commute. There are times when I turn a corner or come to a particular intersection and a part of a specific book I listened to 10 years ago come back to mind.
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I read about the movement thing too, and I totally 110% agree. We need to remember that as adults too though, lest we get too sedentary.
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: We need to remember that as adults too though, lest we get too sedentary
Indeed. Yet another reason why I run/bike/lift. I've watched too many family members suffer through "golden years" made miserable by arthritis and constraints from heart disease and diabetes.
The rule is simple: the more you move, the more you will be able to move, and the longer you will continue moving.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Jeremy Falcon
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OriginalGriff wrote: I have difficulty getting it to remember phone numbers and dates, faces and names, but it happily stores complete GPS info for a road I rode on maybe 7 or 14 times 20 years ago?
You remember what is important to _you_.
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