People forget where they have left their keys because their brain is wired to recall emotionally charged events and ignore the mundane, a study has found.

When we see or experience something emotional such as the birth of a child or a traumatic event, our brain interprets it more vividly and stores it with greater clarity. In contrast everyday events are only processed with a minimal level of detail, explaining why we can remember things from our childhood but not what we ate for dinner 24 hours ago, researchers claim.

Rebecca Todd of the University of Toronto, who led the study, said: “We’ve discovered that we see things that are emotionally arousing with greater clarity than those that are more mundane. What’s more, we found that how vividly we perceive something in the first place predicts how vividly we will remember it later on … it is like the flash of a flashbulb that illuminates an event as it’s captured for memory.”