Thursday, February 11, 2016

Event Boundary

I often get questions about the reason a person decided to retrieve something from another room and, once there, cannot recall what they wanted to retrieve. Enter “Event Boundary.” Psychologists at the University of Notre Dame have discovered that passing through a doorway triggers what's known as an “Event Boundary” in your brain. This ‘boundary’ separates one set of thoughts and memories from the next. It appears that as you move through a ‘doorway’ your brain files away the thoughts you had in the previous room and prepares a blank slate for the new room. So it’s pretty simply—at least it consistently works for my brain. As I walk through the doorway I say aloud what it is I want to retrieve in the next room or garage or whatever. Voila! My brain hangs onto it. Wonderful!

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