Why is the memory flooding when you visit places in the past?

You visit your childhood home, step into your old bedroom and encounter a wave of nostalgic memories. What triggered this memory? How do you suddenly remember things you might not have thought of for decades?

The researchers realized that the context in which memories are created is important for remembering them later . This idea is called contextual binding theory. It focuses on three components: context learning, context change and memory search.

Scientists have figured out why old memories flow back when people visited places in the past.

The context in which memories are created is important for remembering them later.

Contextual learning is establishing learning in the brain that occurs by a linking process. If A and B happen together, they become linked. The theory of contextual constraints goes one step further: A and B are linked not only with each other but also with the context in which they occur.

So what is the context? It is not just your physical position, it is also a mental state that includes your thoughts, emotions and other mental activities that you are experiencing at a given time.

As a result, each memory is associated with different context states. However, some context states will be similar probably because they have the same position or mood or some other factor.

The similarities between contexts are important when recalling memories. The process of finding your memory is quite similar to that of Google, in that you are more likely to find what you are looking for if your search term matches the source content. In memory search, your current mental context is a set of search terms.

The mechanisms are simple but the meaning is profound. In theory, you most likely remember memories from situations similar to the context you currently have. Because your mental context is constantly changing, your mental context will resemble the most recent memories of experience. This explains why it is difficult to remember older events.

But of course, old memories have been forgotten forever. If you can change your setting to resemble long-forgotten memories, you will be able to remember them. This is why old memories flood when you enter your childhood bedroom or walk through your old school.

Memory depends on the context confirmed by a 1975 experiment in which divers memorized lists of words and then tested both on land and underwater. On land, their recall is best for words they have learned on land, while underwater, they remember lists of words they learned better underwater.

This phenomenon is not limited to physical locations. You may find that when you are sad about something, you tend to remember other sad events in your life. This is because your mood and emotions also include your mental context. Experiments have confirmed that memory is boosted when your current mood matches the mood in which you have sought information.

Studies worth more than a century have confirmed that we will also remember things better if we experience them at different times, instead of repeating. This is one of the main reasons why, when preparing for exams, a regular study routine is more effective than instant cramming.

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