The brain’s obsession with event boundaries arises from its inherent function to organize and encode information efficiently, thereby facilitating memory consolidation and retrieval. Event boundaries are mental markers that divide continuous experience into meaningful segments or episodes. Here are several reasons why the brain focuses on event boundaries:

1. Memory Encoding: The brain encodes memories more effectively when it chunks continuous experiences into discrete events. It creates “event models” that include the beginning, middle, and end of an episode, which enhances recall and learning. Event boundaries act as organizational frameworks that improve memory storage efficiency.
2. Cognitive Processing: Event segmentation aids cognitive processing by allowing the brain to switch between different tasks or situations more smoothly. It frees up working memory resources by compartmentalizing information and prevents interference from irrelevant details.
3. Prediction and Planning: Recognizing event boundaries helps the brain predict what might happen next and prepare for upcoming actions. For instance, transitioning from one task to another (like leaving home for work) requires shifting attention and planning according to the new context.
4. Attention Allocation: Detecting changes in scenes or contexts prompts the brain to allocate attention to new salient information. This enables adaptive behavior by focusing on novel elements that might require immediate action or decision-making.
5. Narrative Formation: Human beings have a natural inclination towards storytelling. Event boundaries enable us to structure our experiences into coherent narratives that can be shared with others and used for social communication.

Neuroscientific research suggests that specific brain regions, such as the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, play a critical role in detecting and encoding event boundaries. These regions are sensitive to changes in context, novelty, and temporal order, and they help create episodic memories – memories of personally experienced events that are bound within a spatiotemporal context.