Earworms: Why songs get stuck in our heads
LONDON. March 7. KAZINFORM Music has a tendency to get stuck in our heads. You know the experience - a tune intrudes on your thoughts and plays, and replays, in a never-ending loop. It happened recently to me. So, as a science reporter, I thought I'd try to find out why.
Several weeks ago, I was at home on a Sunday morning when, for no apparent reason, three words popped into my head - "Funky Cold Medina".
That's the name of a song performed by rapper Tone Loc. I'm told it was a hit in the 1990s, but I hadn't heard it until the night before when a friend sang it at a karaoke bar, BBC News reports.
I kept hearing the lyrics - "Cold coolin' at a bar, and I'm looking for some action. But like Mick Jagger said, I can't get no satisfaction."
When the song reappeared in my head, I could hear my friend singing it again and again... and again.
I was stuck with it for nearly a day and a half, before it finally went away.
But it left behind a nagging question. Why do we get songs stuck in our heads in the first place?
"I personally couldn't believe how little there was in terms of research on this phenomenon," says Dr Vicky Williamson, a music psychologist who started studying it a few years ago.
"It seemed to happen to me very frequently."
Dr Williamson, a memory expert at Goldsmith's College in London, found that scientists use a range of terms to describe the subject - stuck-song syndrome, sticky music, and cognitive itch, or most commonly "earworm" - a word which some people misunderstand .
Williamson collaborated with a BBC radio programme, Shaun Keaveny's Breakfast Show on 6Music , which asked its listeners what earworms they were waking up with.
Details also at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17105759