The Doorway Effect

Have you ever walked into a room, only to realize that you can't remember what you went in there for?  Left your office to find a staff member, and then forgotten why you went to find them once you get to their office?  Put your sunglasses on your head and then gone outside thinking that you don't know where your sunglasses are?

We all seem to think that we know why this happens;  we were not concentrating enough on the task at hand.  Some compelling research out of Notre Dame University, however, says that we aren't losing our minds, rather we are just falling victim to the darn doorways that we are walking through. 

We live in a busy world, and our universe is a dangerous place overloading us with information.  It is impossible to process the information coming at us at once, so we tend to work through things one at a time...worry about things one at a time...and so we don't hold onto information beyond its relevance (expiry) date.  Early man needed to be alert in the forest.  He couldn't be watching the butterflies in the jungle if there was a hungry jaguar wandering about;  stopping to smell the roses would make him a tasty morsel in the food chain.  Our brain know what we need to concentrate on.   It keeps us safe by forcing the issues most relevant to our survival forward, and makes room for these ideas by pushing all other information to the wayside.  That's where scientists think that the doors come in.

It would seem that when we cross through a door, our brain "resets" our memory to our new surroundings.  We have crossed a threshold to a new set of information and to make room for it our brain purges the "expired" information--that stuff we brought into the room that is no longer relevant to the experience ahead of us.  The new stuff replaces the old stuff.  That means that even though you are trying to concentrate on one thing, your brain is trying to provide you with the information that it thinks you need based on the changes to your environment.  Ultimately, there isn't room for everything so while you may think that you are losing your mind and dementia is setting in, it is actually your brain playing tricks on you.

Have a read of an article describing that research here.