What we know about forgetting

You’re at a cocktail party, introducing your spouse to a colleague you haven’t seen in years. Suddenly, your brain freezes. Crickets chirp. A dog barks in the distance. Awkward.

Research at the University of Waterloo suggests we shouldn’t be too quick to blame faulty neurons: It’s probably context. In the way our memory catalogues and references information, that face belongs somewhere else.

“We find this to be one of the frustrating aspects of memory,” says Myra Fernandes, whose work with Shahnaz Koji, a PhD student, has revealed that as adults age, we’re less likely to remember a face if it appears in a different context than where we first saw it.

One bit of good news: Context doesn’t appear to be a problem when it comes to recognizing people with whom we have close emotional ties — family members and best friends.

Nevertheless, that embarrassing lapse of recall is enough to drive you to distraction. Fernandes, an associate professor in cognitive neuroscience, has been studying that, too.

The fact that many of us can work and listen to music in the background, but can’t follow two overlapping conversations, appears to have something to do with combinations of incoming information.

Two voices can distract you while you’re talking, but classical music might not because it’s competing for a different area of your brain.

“It’s only when you have competition for the exact same brain structure that you’re going to get what we call ‘catastrophic interference.’ You can’t remember as much as you normally would,” Fernandes says.

The research has implications for work and public safety.

It raises questions about how distractions, such as the buzz of multiple conversations in an open office environment, affect productivity.

And at what point does the job of an air-traffic controller become dangerously saturated as he tunes in to radio transmissions and watches blips on a screen?

“Everybody’s into multi-tasking and trying to be the most efficient, but you can’t be so efficient that you cause harm,” Fernandes says.