If you wonder why certain songs replay persistently in your head, you’ll be interested in recent research on tunes –that get stuck in your head. Sometimes referred to as earworms can be annoying or even distracting – but most of the time they disappear by themselves.
Andrea Halpern, researcher at Bucknell University … discovered that familiar songs that repeat in our minds for several reasons
1. They call up mental images.
2. They hold similar tempo and pitch to already familiar sounds
3. Their ending sounds create a sort of cycle with their beginning sounds
4. They tend to be favorite tunes for the most part
For Andrea Halpern it’s a matter of “trying to understand how memory works at the “front end” as information is entered into our brains.”
If that earworm is a tune you dislike – or if your mental tunes get stuck in your head in ways that distract or frustrate you, for example, she recommends altering what you are doing. Change your focus and unwanted tunes tend to fade.
Perhaps the next that non-vocalist colleague in the next cubicle belts out sounds to a stuck song … you may want facts at your fingertips for how the brain processes tunes. What do you think?
Ellen, this information in interesting. After a wonderful concert the tunes I really like play in my mind for days. This article explains that in part. Thanks.
Posted by: Robyn McMaster | April 14, 2007 7:20 PM | Permalink to Comment