Earworms: Music to Your Ears

I'm not talking about the mythical bugs that crawl into your ears at night. Earworms are those songs that get stuck in your head and roll on a continuous mental tape. It's happened to everyone. You have a song stuck in your head and you can't get rid of it. It's usually one you hate and try to avoid at all costs and if it's a song you liked you grow to despise it. Yesterday you heard it on the radio, or in the mall, or maybe on TV. All night long it played in your mind like a nightmare from which you can't wake. Now you're puffy eyed and irritated with the world. You shower and drink your coffee, desperately trying to think of anything to rock the music out of the rut in your brain. Yet the only thing that works is when another song gets stuck in your mind as you sing along in a desperate attempt to rid yourself of the other. It's a vicious, wormy cycle.

Scientists have studied this phenomenon of course. They have found that when volunteers listened to songs with periods of blank space added that the auditory cortex remained active. This is the part of the brain that handles the information from our ears. The researchers also found that this part of the brain was more active when the song was familiar to the person. The scientists say that this is evidence that confirms that sensory-specific memories are stored in the area that first processes the information. They say this could be why when we recall a song from our memory it is linked with other memories that are associated with the moment of discovery. For example, remembering a particular song may include the memory of where we were the first time we heard it, and even the food we ate or a scent we smelled at the time. Whenever I hear Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall I recall lying on my bed as an angst-ridden teenager. I'm sure the album didn't help. Yet when I hear BB King's The Thrill is Gone I remember the first time my husband and I danced together. That's a sweet connection that I'm more than happy to make.