Finding Your Keys: What Neuroscience Reveals
There’s an advantage to misplacing something, provided that one could find it, because in order to locate the object, one has to play with the mechanisms of memory. The common search method, usually effective for contextual memories, is to retrace one’s steps—that’s about as exciting as eating boiled cauliflower. My obsessive approach, which I rely on when I can't remember the steps themselves, can be dull too, but it occasionally leads to pleasant surprises.After the last day of the academic year, I had separated my school keys from my home set. But weeks later, when I went to the top drawer of my dresser, where I usually keep seldom-used keys, they were not there. The first thought that came to mind was that I was just tired; I was probably not looking carefully enough. read more