>So what’s going on? For starters, people might simply be too excited, explains Ewan McNay, an associate professor in the department of psychology at the State University of New York at Albany. “This is not a concert-specific phenomenon—it can happen any time you’re in a highly emotional state,” he says. People getting married, for example, often say they can’t remember their first dance, or if their Aunt Josephine was there. As the body’s stress levels increase—in response to exciting or distressing factors—the neurons associated with memory start firing indiscriminately. That makes it “really hard” to form new memories. “If you’re slightly on edge, with a little bit of excitement, you’ll actually remember better,” McNay says. “But too much excitement pushes you over the edge in terms of memory formation, and you’re unable to make memories.”
>There’s a scientific, biological explanation for exactly what happens when you get this excited (which the body sees as a state of stress). It starts pumping out glucose—the brain’s favorite molecule for fueling memory, thinking, and learning—from your liver into your bloodstream. Imagine you ran into a bear in the woods, for example: “You want that fuel for your muscles to go and fight the bear or run away from the bear,” McNay says, not wasted on something like memory formation. At the same time, your vagal nerves—which regulate internal organ functions—become stimulated. “You’re saying, ‘Hey, we’re really stressed out: we’re running away from the bear, or we’re watching Taylor Swift.’”
the only part of this i find curious is how they're keeping taylor swift in the headlines