Asklemmy

43979 readers

638 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Is it possible to exhaust a core memory to the point that it is no longer as meaningful to you? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago by aCosmicWave@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

When thinking about the most important moment(s) of your life, do you still feel the full range of emotion associated with that memory? What if you keep recalling the same memory many times, does the intensity of emotion fade?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] arthur@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago

I think this question would fit better on askscience.

The short answer is that the emotions themselves don't "fade", but every time you recall a memory, you are also recalling all previous recalls, and the emotions related to the event you remember are not the same as the emotions on each subsequent recall.

We use computers as an analogy for the 🧠, and there are some reasons for that, but they are not the same, and this analogy have limits.

The brain evolved to keep us alive, and reproduce. Keep a perfect record of previous events would be costly and unnecessary for that. "Learn the lesson" and keep a registry that resembles the past is enough.

(But I'm not a neuroscientist, so I may be wrong, missing something or not updated)