8 Biggest Irritations In Life Explained By Science

6. Forgetting Why You Went Into A Room

Do you ever find yourself aimlessly wandering around your kitchen, having forgotten why you went in there?

We generally chalk this up to not paying attention, or maybe getting a bit old, but researchers at the University of Notre Dame think they might have an alternative explanation. They think it's the doorway that is to blame.

They think that the act of going from one room to another triggers a kind of "location update" in the brain.

Participants in the study were asked to select an object from a table, put it in a backpack and take it to another one. When the researchers quizzed them on which object was currently in the backpack, they found that the participants' memories were worse if they had travelled through a door to get there. Amazingly, this even works in a virtual environment (a video game) or even if they simplyimagine walking through a door.

It's thought that this is a way of keeping our memories efficient, by clearing out the less relevant data as we moving into a new environment.