How can I remember something I have forgotten a long time ago?
The key to remembering old memories is to create memory associations and context structures. For instance if you are trying to remember your third grade teachers name think about all the things associated with third grade that you can remember like the name of the school you went to, your favorite game at recess, what your lunch box looked like. The more associated details you can recall will create a structural context that will build upon itself and lead to additional pieces of information that will help recover what you want to remember. Some memories can be repressed by physical or emotional trauma and are extremely difficult to remember but they do still exist. Visual, sound and olfactory (smell) cues can also bring back memories of the past but they tend to be random and unpredictable.
