With growing anticipation to A24 movie premiere Back roomsliminal space has become a viral symbol of psychological horror. These spaces disturb us because they emphasize our brain’s sensitivity to processing uncertainty and transition. The images of the main characters of the film, the supporting rooms themselves, evoke places that we have all experienced: a narrow and dim hotel corridor, a long corridor of an underground hospital or an empty airport terminal. By checking neurology behind these spaces, we can better understand their effects and what they reveal about navigation transitions.
Trapped in Liminality
Recently, it has become more cost-effective to abandon shopping centers, large buildings and entire neighborhoods and build new ones rather than reuse or repurpose existing structures. This practice led to a new typology of liminal spaces. These are at the end of time: places that sit empty, waiting to be reused or destroyed, like ghosts before they pass. These are not only liminal spaces, but spaces that are closed in liminality. This architecture of uncertainty, both in space and time, can resonate with many young people’s experiences of our world as young people move into adulthood.
Neurology shows that the systems we use to navigate the physical space also organize our memories. Our brains are very sensitive to the liminal space because memory organized around change – in space, time and events. By learning how the brain works when in liminal space, we can better navigate change and avoid getting stuck in uncertainty.
Boundaries structure our experiences
Spatially, liminal space physically separates the transition between one place and another. As circulation space, liminal space makes up about one third of buildings. They appear as corridors, staircases and vestibules. Typically, these spaces do not stimulate us emotionally, engage our senses, or provide meaningful, purpose-driven reasons for occupying them. They serve as connectors between other meaningful places and as borders between more important events.
The brain uses boundaries to determine where one experience ends and another begins. Research about Gate effect show that we remember fewer objects after passing a door than the same distance in a room without a door. It is suggested that it forces our brain to update from the previous room to the current context.
Transitions keep us alert. As we move through transition space, our brains actively process differences in context. Research suggests that when the spaces on either side of a door or border are very similar, the brain struggles to separate them into separate experiences. When spaces bleed together, the way they are remembered also gets mixed up.
In Back rooms use these processes to push our tolerance for uncertainty to the limit. They are designed to stabilize; spaces literally merge and begin to form, just as our memories do. While our time, occupying threshold spaces, such as doors, lasts only for a moment, the door back rooms, liminality is extended to an indefinite or even seemingly infinite duration. With doors in front of you, corridors cutting behind you and the possibility of jump scares from every direction, we are always on our guard; we can not attention inward and let the mind wander.
Contextual cues reduce ambiguity
During change, our brain tries to plan the scenario: predicting what lies on the other side of the boundary and determining the best way forward. It does this by comparing the current context with the stored memory. Stable environmental cues help us feel focused and safe.
When space is featureless, there are few contexts to notice decision making. It’s like trying to put together a puzzle when all the pieces are the same color, or driving through an underground parking garage where everything looks the same. In Back rooms They are designed with no clear output, no global markers, and no window into the larger context you are in or even what time of day it is. You can’t remember how you got in and can’t find your way out.
Langing helps us in the transition process
A healing version of liminal space becomes a buffering tool that allows us to remain in transition without trapping us in uncertainty. When a liminal space is intentionally designed to be a supportive pause, we can move out of a state of active scanning. There is an opportunity to more meaningfully integrate context, internal reflection, and preparation for future events. In his articleIn “Pausing Places: The Cognitive Effects of Wakeful Relaxation,” Miriam Hoffman suggests that something as simple as a chair positioned at a decision point in a complex environment can encourage pausing and support internal processing.
Essential reading in neuroscience
Designing liminal spaces in our lives
We are currently experiencing a massive transition—social, technological, economic, and developmental—for today’s youth. The result on the other hand is difficult to predict. Occupying the middle means that there is uncertainty and potential for harm, or the possibility that there is a range of responses from fear and are afraid of curiosity and exploration. The current obsession with liminal spaces helps us understand where they appear in our lives and how slowly we buffer the transitions. Liminal space does not have to trap us; they can help us in the process of change.
Because our brain interprets liminal space in the same way it processes the transience of life, architecture offers valuable strategies for managing uncertainty. By deliberately designing transitions—limiting contemporaneous boundary moments, increasing the visibility of context, and creating spaces for reflective pauses—we can make transitions more psychological. stability and healing.
