And now, for all of us, is there any way to keep it from happening? You are under pressure, people watching, and your brain freezes, you can't remember a name or a phrase you know by heart.
When it happened to Rick Perry last night at the debate, we started asking questions: what do the experts say about when and why our brains betray us like that? Here is ABC's John Berman.
There is nothing worse than completely forgetting your point in a televised debate.
"Sorry, oops."
Well, except for seemingly loosing the ability to talk at all in a televised debate. That happened to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer. How about forgetting the words to the national anthem in a televised NBA game? And forgetting words may be not as bad as forgetting your wife. Did that happen to Christian Bale at the Academy Awards?
"And of course, mostly, my wonderful wife, ah...." Yes, Rick Perry has joined an illustrious club of those who suffer from brain freeze.
We use our frontal lobes to sort our memories, the problem is that part of the brain is sensitive to anxiety.
"If you start to freeze up, then you get more stressed. And the stress hormones got even higher and that shuts down the frontal lobe and disconnects it from the rest of the brain and makes it even harder to retrieve those memories. Which explains how chief justice John Robers could flub the oath of office:
"...that I will execute the office of the president to the United States faithfully.
While George W. Bush could flub this:"Fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me, you can't get fooled again."
But of all the famous embarrassing cases of brain freeze, the absolutely most perfect example of all time is...eh...I can't remember. Oops.
John Berman, ABC news, New York.
