system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Eli5: How exactly does everything we see and experience around us get turned into chemicals in our brain? For example, how is a memory nothing more than a chemical?

Edit: Hello, I just wanted to say thank you for all of the answers. I’m a very curious person and this is one of the topics I’ve always struggled to understand. I have to go to work but hopefully when I come back, there will be more replies for me to look at!!! :)
gpt
I think it's more accurate to say that what you experience is turned into a pattern of excitation of neurons, so the pattern of firing neurons encodes the patterns of the experience.  The "chemicals", or neurotransmitters, are just the carriers of excitation between neurons.