There are times when people get frustrated with studying because of the inability to retain that information, but happen to remember their childhood birthday party. Why is it that people tend to remember certain events rather than other aspects of their life?

There are many different things that contribute to your memory, and how strong it is. One thing that is proven to create better memories of certain situations is the strong emotion that one feels during certain events. Memories that are connected to strong emotions typically tend to engrave itself in one’s brain.

For example, many people know where they were and what they were doing during 9/11 and why mothers tend to remember little things about the day their child was born. However most individuals don’t know little things like what they were wearing or what the weather was like 3 weeks ago on a random Tuesday.

 “Stronger emotions create stronger memories because we tend to pay more attention to the events that are invoking those emotions,” teacher Matthew Barno said. “Also emotions directly go into our limbic system, which is tied directly to our hippocampus and that has a strong relation to explicit memories. Those we tend to recall better.”

Because of how focused people become when faced with a strong emotion, the memory  that is created is sewed into one’s brain. So as unfortunate as it is that we cannot remember everything, people’s brains do connect emotion with memories which is an incredible aspect of the human brain.