Before revision: According to David Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida who has been studying the phenomenon since 2004, the phenomenon is a consequence of tension between the brain's habit-memory and prospective-memory systems, which is resolved when basal ganglia "habit memory" suppresses the "prospective memory" system of the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, resulting in a false memory and what he calls "autopilot".
After revision: M.According to David Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida who has been studying the phenomenon since 2004, the phenomenon is a consequence of tension between the brain's habit-memory and prospective-memory systems, which is resolved when basal ganglia "habit memory" suppresses the "prospective memory" system of the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, resulting in a false memory and what he calls "autopilot".