The bandwidth of your sensory inputs is tremendous, therefore the brain discards most information that it processes and only keeps a subset, these are what we c

The bandwidth of your sensory inputs is tremendous, therefore the brain discards most information that it processes and only keeps a subset, these are what we call "memories." Think of it like a lossy compression mechanism (eg: JPEG, MP3, or your audio or video codec of choice). Furthermore, the brain is a pattern-matching system. It will extract information that is most memorable (highest entropy) and keep it. Certain situations which are stressful or emotional (eg: a surprising or frightening event) will release norepinephrine which makes memories stronger. Finally, the brain applies tons of heuristics to "fill in" parts of the memory that are not that different from regular experience. It will also pay more attention to things that confirm your biases: https://www.e-counseling.com/articles/what-is-selective-memory/ https://www.e-counseling.com/articles/what-is-selective-memo... If you're interested in learning more, this is a great text summarizing many research studies in modern cognitive science and psychology: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18090066-the-owner-s-manual-for-the-brain https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18090066-the-owner-s-man... https://play.google.com/store/books/details/The_Owner_s_Manual_for_the_Brain_4th_Edition_The_U?id=5aJUAgAAQBAJ&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/books/details/The_Owner_s_Manu...