This is called dissociation. Although often described as a serious psychiatric symptom, dissociation also occurs in normal, everyday life. In the brain, when engaged with a menial task, we can rely on procedural memory deeper within the brain such as the basal ganglia. This allows the outer layers of the brain to disengage from “outward activity”, and brain activity will spread to a large network of brain regions called the default mode network.
We have two kinds of memory, short term and long term. Short term memory has everything you experience, and the most interesting bits are converted to long term memory, and the rest are forgotten. Often a menial task is so boring it doesn’t make it into long term memory, and we wind up with a recent gap we can’t recall. You are fully aware during that time, you just don’t remember anything from it.
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