Why do people sometimes forget what they came into a room to get or do, but remember it a couple of hours later completely unprompted?

Question

Why do people sometimes forget what they came into a room to get or do, but remember it a couple of hours later completely unprompted?

In: 295

Answer 1

The threshold.

The brain remembers things until the “scene” changes. Once you go to another room, area, or pass a divider, your brain thinks the thoughts you had while in the previous area are no longer necessary and doesn’t try to keep them.

You can get them back, they aren’t erased, but they just aren’t actively kept in short term memory.