Re:It depends (Score 1)

Actually, when you think about it, that's a common occurance... Most people may not be encyclopedic (although my friends tease that i'm that way), but how many times have you been asked a question, had a major blank in the brian, and if you just waited a few seconds, and didn't tense up, *poof* the answer appeared. I don't know that much about how it works, but a bit more speculation can't hurt. What if the brain not only does an associative path, but does a few layers of abstraction beyond that? So that the recall i was talking about above is generated by a mind basically doing a reference check...Eg: "what's Sarah's pH#?" sets off images of phones and Sarah, then does a cross search for all memories that include both those, (*grin* regardless of capitalization) then tries to arrange by date, and importance....So while you are waiting for the phone number to occur to you, you remember that you have a Birthday gift you've never sent her, and that you have to pay the phone bill....(first relations) and those thoughts lead to a few other associations, while the original search is still being processed, of other bills, other people(all of which are then added to the calculation of where that memory is), and suddenly halfway through a thought on whether you did your laundry, you remember that there is a 64 in her number, and *poof* the rest of the memory is downloaded....because you've been, i don't know if this is the right phrase, but homing in on the co-ordinates of the memory....It's just a thought!