When you can almost remember a word that you are trying to think of

This is another one of those posts prompted by my reading too many books about the brain, but it is surely an event that all of us can recall in our lives. Very recent lives in my case, probably once every day.

When you are trying to remember something like the name of a person or a place or (in recent cases for me) a drug, you often get to the point - do you not - where you have a clear idea that the word is in your head, but it is hiding behind various veils and the actual sound and spelling of it will not quite make themselves known. But you know it is in there. 

Sometimes you have a strong idea of the sounds involved in it; you might remember its first letter, or how long it is, or the kind of ending it has. There may even be another word which reminds you of it in some way, even though you know it has no phonic relation to it. It the name you are thinking of is 'Archer' for example, you may find that for some reason the word 'bow' is floating in your mind. Or 'Agincourt' for no good reason. I assert these things quite boldly, because these are things I notice in my own mind, but it is quite possible that everyone else will say 'What on earth are you talking about?'

 But on the lucky chance that some of you can identify with this 'not quite remembering' situation, I'd like to offer you one exempla gratis. 

Yesterday I was trying to remember name of the founders of Stagecoach, the large UK bus company that originated in Scotland. The word 'slogan' was the first one that popped up, although I knew they were not called that. But from my lexicographic years I do of course remember that the word 'slogan' is in fact from Scottish Gaelic, as I understand, where it is some kid of 'battle cry'. So instead of 'Scotland!' the hero could be shouting out 'Guinness is good for you!' or 'Just do it!' But clearly, the Scottish origin somehow pushed that word up the memory ladder. 

I also remembered that the surname was rather uncommon in England, but less so in Scotland. When I finally googled them, they were a brother and sister called Brian Souttar and Ann Gloag, so two surnames . So 'slogan' had several phonetic overlaps. 

But what this all makes me think about is how all these words and their associations are distributed in our short-term or long-term memory, and what circumstances will make them easier to find. The current thinking in neurology is I believe quite 'distributed', which means that elements of memory emerge from different parts of the brain. Perhaps some parts of our neural network remember emotions, others remember time, others remember sounds, others remember connections. But when we remember or try to remember something, I believe that all zones are activated and the picture of the thing we are trying to remember, even it is simply a word, is very much 'three-dimensional' So when we have a name we are trying to remember, there may be a strong emotional component depending on whether we liked or disliked a particular person. "File him under 'people I hate'"

The other thing that I noticed last year was how incredibly persistent our word-finding can be even if we have not accessed a word for decades. A friend of mine was trying to remember the name of someone we had both taught with in Germany 40 years ago. I had not seen her since, and only talked about her very little, I suspect, but suddenly her name, first name and surname, just popped up. How many other items are waiting to be unearthed as if by and archaeologist? And is it true - as some people say - that we never really forget anything? Our RAM might be a bit flaky but our ROM is rock solid?