Ah, the brain's quirks under the influence of ketamine continue to surprise us! While ketamine's classification as a dissociative anesthetic might lead one to expect overall calming effects on brain activity—akin to traditional sedatives or tranquilizers—the reality is that ketamine's impact on neural processing is far from straightforward.

When it comes to memory encoding, the interplay of ketamine with the limbic system can indeed result in interesting outcomes. While certain aspects of memory formation and retrieval may be disrupted by ketamine-induced alterations in brain function, leading to transient amnesia or gaps in memory recall for events occurring during its influence, other facets of memory processing may see increased activation.

The enhanced emotional experiences often reported by individuals under the influence of ketamine can involve heightened engagement of limbic system structures responsible for emotional processing and memory consolidation. This means that while specific forms of memory functioning may be impaired by the drug, such as episodic or autobiographical recall during intoxication, emotional memories tied to experiences under its effects could potentially be more vividly encoded due to this increased limbic activity.

So when you feel like your memories are playing tricks on you after a wild ride with some K (ketamine), just blame it on your exuberant limbic system taking center stage in the show!