It’s a nice evening, the insects are chirping in the trees, you’ve got a good book in your hand and suddenly, out of nowhere, ‘Jingle Bells’ pops into your head and won’t go away. Oh, what fun! Almost everyone has had an attack of what Germans call an ‘earworm’. In recent years, musicologists, neurologists, physiologists and psychologists have all examined the phenomenon of a song or melody that keeps repeating in one’s mind - also known by terms such as ‘stuck song syndrome’ and ‘involuntary musical imagery’. In a 2011 survey by Lassi Liikkanen, a Finnish cognitive scientist, more than 90 per cent of respondents said they were bugged by an ‘earworm’ at least once a week. “Some people are more susceptible to them than others, primarily those who have a lot to do with music - who make music themselves, listen to the radio a lot or have a large record collection,” said Jan Hemming, a professor of musicology at the University of Kassel. Personality traits likely play a role as well, according to Eckhart Altenmueller, who treats ‘sick musicians’ at a Hanover university. “Sensitive people who generally have a low threshold for stimuli are particularly susceptible to ‘earworms’,” he said. It is unclear how songs and melodies become stored for later retrieval in a person’s long-term memory. Since ‘earworms’ cannot be produced deliberately, their inception is difficult to observe with Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) or Electroencephalography (EEG). To become lodged in one’s long-term memory, the 'maddening' music must fulfil certain criteria. “In ‘catchy’ tunes, there are no large leaps between notes and no complex rhythms,” Altenmueller said, adding that instrumental pieces rarely became ‘earworms’. “Simple lyrics can be conducive (to ‘earworms’). By the same token, a song in a foreign language that you don’t understand won’t likely become an ‘earworm’.” The number of times you have heard a certain song probably plays no role. What counts is an emotional connection with it. “The effect occurs when someone associates strong feelings with a melody - usually positive, but sometimes even negative ones,” said Michael Deeg, an official in the German Association of Otorhinolaryngologists.
A hit tune released during a special summer holiday, or your first love’s favourite song, are likely ‘earworm’ candidates. Unwittingly stored in your long-term memory, they can pop into your mind at odd moments. “This tends to happen in situations when the brain is idling - like during the low-attention state known as ‘mind-wandering’ (when a person is cleaning house, jogging or waiting at a bus stop). An association - a verbal cue, a place, a smell, a particular mood - can trigger the memory, hours or even years after the person has heard the song. “The melody is activated in the form of short sequences or snippets, typically between four and eight seconds in length,” Altenmueller said. “For one person it could be the beginning, for another a certain rhyme or the last line of the lyrics.” The duration of an ‘earworm’ experience is just as unpredictable as its occurrence. Several techniques have been suggested to banish an ‘earworm’ from one’s mind. Some scientists advise listening to the entire ‘earworm’ song, to free the brain from the thrall of the repeating snippets. Deeg recommends listening to a different song. “The ‘earworm’ is stored in regions of the central nervous system responsible for hearing in general,” he said, noting that the brain was unable to ‘play back’ the ‘earworm’ while processing new acoustic signals. But beware, this strategy could very well cause infection by another ‘earworm’. Some ‘earworm’ sufferers try to keep their mind from wandering. “This can be done, for example, by concentrating on a pleasantly challenging (non-emotional) activity,” Hemming said. Effective diversions include chess, intensive conversations and sudoku puzzles.
Read More...