A medical story for the forum:

[soldierant]

65. I didn't save my source for this, and it's been a long time

since I came across it. But someone was doing studies on location-dependent learning to try to find out how much it happens. For instance, it's well known among choir directors that if they change the arrangement of the sections, the choir needs to re-learn music already learned. Anyway this group went to a medical school and set up a situation where a graduating class took their fial exam, in the lecture room the course had bee taught in, and in the same seating. The class average on this exam was over 90%. Then the same class moved to a different room, scrambled the seating, and took the same exam again. the same day. The class average fell to 60-something %. I certainly don't mean to imply that these phenomena are unique to musicians and physicians. I expect we all experience some of this.