Dr. Robert Shulman, from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at RUSH Medical College, discusses why some Taylor Swift fans can’t remember the concert they attended.
While thousands of Taylor Swift fans across the country have lived their Wildest Dreams after seeing her live on stage, some may have a tough time remembering the concert in the upcoming days.
This is because the concert's excitement may lead some Swift fans to develop what experts describe as "post-concert amnesia," a condition they might not be able to Shake Off easily.
Some concert-goers during "The Eras Tour" have reported an inability to remember much of what they witnessed.
"Anyone else not remember anything from the concert?" a Reddit post in the r/taylorswift channel read.
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"Pretty much the next day it felt like I totally forgot everything, and more so now weeks later, like I wasn’t actually present for the concert," one user replied.
Similar comments can be seen across social media platforms.
But experts say there's an explanation -- and it's a phenomenon they know all too well.
"Well, it's fascinating that it takes a Taylor Swift concert and multiple concerts for this to become topical, because this is something that happens. It's a normal process, actually," said Dr. Robert Shulman, associate professor and acting chair for the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Rush University Medical Center.
"It's a normal phenomenon that when one is excited, and one has a lot of sensations coming in and they're sort of hyper-focused on one thing, you know, that they may not be able to process in memory," he explained.
Shulman said the so-called "concert amnesia" results in fans having only "snippets of memory." They are able to remember going to the concert, but can only remember bits and pieces of the experience.
"It's not really a full amnesia. At no point does anybody describe a fugue state where they wake up and, you know, they've been to the concert and are home, they don't know how they got there, they don't remember being anywhere."
What Causes Post-concert Amnesia?
According to Shulman, long-term memories require the "transfer of short-term memory to the areas where long-term memory is held." That typically occurs in the days and weeks after an event.
"So when one has a whole lot of adrenaline and corticosteroids circulating because they're excited and jumping up and down and 'this is the greatest thing ever,' yeah, you're not going to remember everything start to finish because of that. Because it interferes with how memory works," he said.
Fans who experience this can try to recover some of their memory by listening to a song or seeing the performance played back.
"Sometimes it takes a cue," he said. "You know, such as listening to the song, it may bring back the memory of listening and seeing the song being performed in the concert so that that's the way you do it."
For those attending the performances and looking to prevent amnesia from happening, Shulman said it can be as simple as practicing mindfulness.
"If you want to process as much as you can ... I think the best way to do it is to is to maybe not get so caught up in the moment and such and, you know, practice a little mindfulness. You sort of step back, and you sort of survey the crowd, and you try and take it all in and what does it mean and and such. There will be visual memories. There will also be emotional memories," he said.
Either way, Shulman said the inability to remember shouldn't be seen as a deficiency.
"I just hope everybody enjoys they enjoy their experience anyway, and continues to enjoy the experience," he said. "You know, even though you don't recall stuff ... folks will probably recall the emotion, that it was a great event and they had a great fun and they shouldn't be too upset that maybe they don't have the specifics down."
