Three days later, and Sweet’s “Fox on the Run” was still playing on loop in my head. No matter how hard I tried to forget it, the chorus haunted everything I did, from sipping my morning coffee to showering to tapping out work on my keyboard. At this point, I (and everyone around me) was ready to completely remove whatever part of my brain had retained this particular melody. What is it about pop songs that stick in our minds? And once they’re there, is there any hope of getting them out again?
One Woman’s Hit Is Another Man’s Torture
By now, it’s a matter of public record that Guantánamo Bay interrogators often resort to American pop tunes to break down their prisoners. One inmate, Ruhal Ahmed, recalled the ordeal of having to listen to Britney Spears’s “...Baby One More Time.” I can empathize.
How can a song, a melody, even a phrase, have such a profound effect on human beings?
In his book Musicophilia, the neurologist Oliver Sacks uses the term “brainworms” to describe those annoyingly repetitive musical phrases that stay with us long after the song has finished. Other experts refer to them as “earworms” and blame them for causing “brain itch,” the brain’s need to fill gaps in a song’s rhythm. Music triggers a part of the brain called the auditory cortex, which works to keep “singing” if, say, the song you’re hearing is interrupted or has an unconventional beat. Though most musicians probably haven’t studied neurology in depth, they understand this phenomenon well enough to play it up in their songs, varying time signatures and syncopating rhythms enough to keep our auditory cortexes working overtime. That’s why 99 percent of us have fallen victim to brain itch at least once in our lives.
Hum a Tune, Raise Your IQ?
Earworms and the brain itch they cause are infuriating, but they may also be great for your brain. Studies consistently show that music aids memory and has been used to remarkably improve stroke victims’ recovery. It may also play an important role in warding off Alzheimer’s-related dementia. It’s hard to believe that pop music can actually make you smarter, but music really does improve intelligence.
That rhythm stuck in your head works the way cross-training helps a runner improve his performance. Your left brain works to recall the song and consequently becomes better at verbal learning, just like a runner would develop his calf muscles by lifting weights. This is also why music is such a powerful mnemonic device. Anyone’s who’s had to memorize the fifty states in grade school knows that you retain information much better when it’s attached to an easily recognizable melody. That’s because verbal and musical memory go hand in hand.
Music may also improve learning on another front: by calming us down enough that we remember information. Music suppresses the stress hormone cortisol in the body, making us more relaxed and more receptive. This applies to all kinds of music, even heavy metal. So even though that song hook might be driving you crazy now, it will make you calmer and even smarter in the long run.
How to Scratch the Brain Itch?
Scratching brain itch can be dangerous, since, as we all know, the more you scratch, the more you itch, and vice versa. Different things work for different people, and the solution to the problem usually depends on why your brain is itching in the first place: is it because the song you were listening to got cut off on the radio, or because the melody itself is addicting? Try listening to the song all the way through. This works for many people, usually because their brains were trying to complete a melody that had been interrupted. And if that doesn’t work, you may be able to channel your brain into another hook simply by playing another song. Of course, that’s not an ideal solution, as you’re just replacing one earworm with another, but it’s a matter of preference. I, for one, would much rather have Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls” stuck in my head than Britney Spears, though anything played on loop gets tedious very quickly.
