The Key to Your Memory Banks

Why do certain images find the secret combination to our brains memory banks? Our brains view and process thousands of images every day, the majority are filtered out. But occasionally, one image, finds that secret combination. It runs through our filtering system to our memory banks like a laser guided image bomb. It announces: I am here to stay. It might be the picture of a young girl on the cover of National Geographic magazine, or Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe, or Grant Woods American Gothic, or Edvard Munch The Scream, or Picasso’s Guernica. Or add that image, you cannot forget _______________?
Neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran in the famous Reith lectures postulates that it is as simple as a gosling following its mother. That we have imprinted on our brain cells from eons ago, a recognition system of flee or flight, friend or foe, possible mating partner or not? where your brain has to decide in a spilt second. And today that survival technique has been transferred to how we respond to all images. Is the answer to our response to imagery is as simple as that?? It does make you wonder, when millions of us respond in the same way to all those iconic images.