It's infuriating really. You have this moment of pure genius and move into another room to execute it. However once you get there, it's gone. Poof. Never happened.
Why is it that we sometimes arrive at our destinations but forget what we came for? According to researchers, it's not our fault. It's the door's fault.
It happens as a result of something called 'the boundary effect'. The doorway acts as an ‘event boundary’, signalling to our brain that one memory episode is finished and another can begin.
Researchers at the University of Notre Dame came up with the theory. They got some volunteers to play a video game which had 55 virtual rooms. In the game, the volunteers had to pick up objects from one table and put them down on another.
However, as soon as they would pick an object up, it would disappear. They were then told they either had to walk to another table in the room to put the imaginary object down, or they had to walk into the next room. As they went through the game, researchers would give them quizzes, asking them to name whatever object they had just picked up. Their responses were more unsure and slower when they would have to move rooms to get to the next object.
The study was repeated in real life and the results were the same. They also did another test which found that walking back into the original room didn't spark their memories either. Debunking the myth that retracing your steps helps you remember.
So basically, our brains can’t keep all the information we absorb immediately to hand, so it uses these memory episodes. When you move from one environment to the next, it purges itself and starts recording new information.
Which is all well and good until you can't remember what you just walked all the way up the stairs for.
Via Metro