Is ‘travel brain’ a thing?
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
David Diamond is an expert on stress and memory. But he is not immune to whatever that thing is that happens to many people when they travel.
At the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint on one of his trips, he said during a recent phone interview, “I put my wallet in a container and then I put my two bags up. I was fully aware that my wallet was up ahead and I was thinking about that,” when he put his belt up last.
With his focus on the wallet, he grabbed it, then his bags, and moved on. In the bathroom, he noticed his belt was missing and went back to recover it at the TSA checkpoint.
He said he asked TSA personnel how often people leave things, “and they said, ‘Every 10 minutes.’ “
Travel is stressful, and stress messes with our brains. For most of us, travel is also outside our normal routine, so we have to hold in our minds the things we need to do when we are traveling. That kind of anticipatory holding of memory is vulnerable, he said.
“We’re always memory multi-tasking, and when we get distracted and stressed, what we hold in our minds can get lost.”
When we leave a coat or a laptop at the airport, most of us try to reclaim it. That some people never do is baffling.
“That makes no sense,” said Mr. Diamond, a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida and director of the university’s Neuroscience Collaborative Program. “Unless, if it is something of value, they might think, ‘Screw it, someone took it.’ “
Otherwise, he said, “You’re getting into a more psychological interpretation of helplessness behavior. If people feel helpless, they may not try to improve their outcomes.”
The more irreplaceable something is explains why people might try harder to get it back. A laptop that is backed up might not be worth claiming if you were planning to buy a new one anyway.
But a laptop that isn’t backed up? With contents that are critical to an upcoming conference?
Mr. Diamond knows about that. He had such a laptop and a conference that depended on its contents.
“I was preparing for a very important conference and I was at a coffee shop,” he said. “I got distracted when I was ready to leave and walked out. I went to work nearby and was working all day, thinking about the weekend conference, and at the end of the day, I’m looking for my laptop and it’s nowhere in my office. And it’s not in my car.”
He turned his office and his car inside out before thinking, ‘Is it possible I left it in the coffee shop?’ “
He had. But it was there waiting for him.