Understand why some songs don’t leave your head – 09/29/2024 – Equilíbrio

Research suggests that catchy songs that stick in your head — colloquially known as “earworms” — are common and can happen to people on a weekly or even daily basis.

“Some people walk around with music in their heads all the time,” says Ira Hyman, a psychologist who studies the phenomenon at Western Washington University in Washington state.

Scientists don’t fully understand why it’s so difficult to get rid of “earworms.” But certain songs are more likely than others to settle into our heads. And your propensity to pick them up may depend on what you’ve listened to recently and what you’ve been doing.

What makes a song stick in our head?

It’s probably no surprise that the songs that enter our brains are often songs we’ve listened to recently.

But it is also possible to have this type of memory after hearing a word or sound — or even experiencing a situation — that reminds you of a specific song, says Callula Killingly, a postdoctoral researcher who studies this type of sound at the University of Technology from Queensland, Australia.

Maybe someone mentions Madonna, and then you find yourself humming “Material Girl.” Or you take a bite of linguine that tastes exactly like the pasta you ate before a Taylor Swift concert, and suddenly you’re singing “Shake It Off.”

But don’t expect to always understand where the “earworm” originated. Often, it’s “difficult to know what started it,” says Hyman.

Are some songs more likely to stick in your memory than others?

Research suggests that songs with faster tempos — or longer, sustained notes, like Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” — are more likely to stick in our heads.

The more often we listen to a song, the more likely we are to start singing it internally as well. So those ubiquitous Rick Astley memes that started in the late 2000s probably caused millions of people to have “Never Gonna Give You Up” playing on loop in their heads.

However, music generally only tends to give you “earworms” when you’re doing certain types of activities, explains Hyman.

In a small study of 16 undergraduate students, for example, researchers had them listen to a well-known song. The next day, the scientists asked them under what circumstances, if any, the music had returned to their heads. Songs were more likely to come to mind when participants were doing tasks that normally make the mind wander.

Such activities could be walking, taking a shower or washing dishes, adds Hyman. But more difficult tasks, like a puzzle or schoolwork, can also cause a wandering mind.

The reason may be that we have more space in our brains to devote to these songs when we’re not fully focused on the task at hand — as any high school student trying to do math homework could tell you.

Sometimes it’s a little too easy to create the right condition for an “earworm,” says Hyman. His colleagues approached him at the end of the day, just before his bike ride home, and sang “Who Let the Dogs Out” just to get the song stuck in his head — and it worked.

“I’m like, ‘Stop it. I hate you,'” he says.

How can I get a song out of my mind?

Sometimes “earworms” are perfectly pleasant. But other times, they can be extremely annoying. Fortunately, research suggests some ways to get rid of them.

Chewing gum is a potential option. In a study published in 2015, researchers asked 18 undergraduate students to listen to a popular song and then asked them to try not to think about the song for three minutes. Half of the participants were given gum to “chew vigorously” for the three minutes, and the other half were not. Participants chewing gum were less likely to report hearing the song in their heads.

Of course, this is just one small study, so more research is needed to understand how (or even if) chewing gum helps eliminate existing “earworms,” ​​says Emery Schubert, a psychologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

Still, there’s an explanation that makes sense: Chewing gum can co-opt the brain regions involved in singing along with “earworms” in our heads, he explains.

Schubert says that because songs tend to proliferate in our minds when they’re unoccupied, it can also help to put you in a different frame of mind — for example, by entering a mildly stressful social situation.

“Start talking to someone you don’t know very well,” says Schubert. “If I had a song in my mind right now and I talked to you, I would probably forget it.”

And if you have a particularly annoying theme, you can always try replacing it with a more pleasant one, says Hyman.

“Put on different music,” he says. “Pick one you don’t mind.”

_{This article originally appeared in The New York Times}