7 facts about the "stickiness songs" ("ear worms") Bashny.Net

Surely you know the state when the annoying song is "stuck" in your head, is woven into your thoughts, and turns again and again, and get rid of it is almost impossible. The phenomenon of "contagious song" is very common and quite surprising that so far almost no attempts to study this phenomenon.

Only a few years ago, the music psychologist Vicky Williamson took up the study of this phenomenon, which is called "the syndrome of jam tracks", "contagious music" or the most common term "ear worm" (eng. «Earworm»). Here are her conclusions:

1. tunes stuck individual. Survey of more than 2,500 people, Vicki Williamson found that intrusive music, so-called "ear worms" virtually repeated in the list. This means that in the minds of people get stuck completely different songs, without any patterns. Accordingly, it is difficult to predict what kind of song can "get stuck" in your head. Each person has their own "sticky music," his "ear worm».

2. Most often "stuck" recently heard tunes. This is not surprising, you hear a song - and it "sticks" to you, scroll in your head over and over again, not giving your brain a rest.

3. When you listen to the same song several times, the chance that this tune stuck in your head, rising.

4. Sometimes, in memory float and scroll song heard long ago. This requires a "trigger" that starts scrolling mechanism melody in my head. Moreover, people are not always aware that it became thereby trigger that made the forgotten melody float in my head. Vicki Williamson describes the case when she started humming for a long time to hear the song «Faith» George Michael. The fact that she came across a box of shoe shop of «Faith».

5. Other triggers can be stressful. Vicki Williamson tells the story of a woman who heard the song of Bananarama during final exams and since then can not get rid of this song in stressful situations. As soon as a woman takes any trouble, the song pops up and starts spinning in her head over and over again.

6. Vicky Williamson says "ear worms" part of involuntary memory, that is, the same part of the brain that causes a person to suddenly want to try any food or remember about the man, whom he had not seen.

7. Another expert, Daniel Levitin of McGill University of Montreal, said that "ear worms" may be associated with the history of human evolution. It is known that the writing appeared about 5,000 years ago, despite the fact that people are living much longer on the planet. Therefore, for many thousands of years, people have used the song - the words transcribed to music - to store the necessary information.

via factroom.ru