The Doorway Dilemma: When Your Brain Hits Pause

It often happens to me that I walk into a room to grab something or do a task, only to completely forget what it was the moment I step inside. It’s a common experience that many people can relate to.

This is known as the “doorway effect”. It happens when you enter a new room and suddenly forget what you were about to do, it is something experienced by everyone. This is a psychological phenomenon where walking through a doorway can trigger our brain to compartmentalise, which in turn causes it to reset and just forget what we were just thinking about or planning to do. Entering a new environment creates this shift and our brain treats this new environment as the start of a new event or situation.

Another reason is that our working memory has very limited capacity, if we are holding multiple thoughts at once, the act of moving onto a new environment may lead our brain to push the earlier thoughts out of focus.

Memory bookmarking is also something that plays a role, This process involves the brain temporarily storing a task or thought as a "bookmark" in working memory, acting as a mental cue for something we need to remember or do. However, if our focus shifts or the context or the environment changes, like walking through a doorway, our brain struggles to retrieve the bookmark because the associated environmental cues have disappeared.

This also involves a retrieval mechanism, which is basically returning to the original context can lead to the reactivation of the cue to help us remember. When we retrace our steps to jog our memory, we often recall what we were thinking about or intending to do in that specific environment.

“Doorway effect” gives us a quite fascinating glimpse of how our brain manages memory. While it can be frustrating, simple actions like retracing our steps can help us connect the dots, reminding us of the remarkable yet quirky ways our mind works.