by Gord Hotchkiss

Ever open the door to the fridge and then for­get what you were look­ing for?

Or ever head to your bed­room and then, upon enter­ing it, for­get why you went there in the first place?

Me too. And it turns out we’re not alone. New research from the Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame’s Gabriel Rad­van­sky indi­cates this sud­den “thresh­old” amne­sia is actu­ally pretty com­mon. Walk­ing from one room to another trig­gers an “event bound­ary” in the mind, which seems to act as a cue for the brain to file away short-term mem­o­ries and move on to the next task at hand. If your tasks causes you to cross one of these event bound­aries and you don’t keep your work­ing mem­ory actively engaged through delib­er­ate focus­ing of atten­tion, it could be dif­fi­cult to remem­ber what it was that moti­vated you in the first place.