Can’t get a certain song out of your head? There might be a reason for that.
It turns out there’s a science behind creating earworms, those catchy tunes that can get stuck in your head and never seem to leave.
“A lot of people have them,” says Leigh Richardson, founder of the Brain Performance Center. “And for like two thirds of the people that do have them, they're either neutral or positive. But some people find them annoying and disturbing. I mean, I can remember when ‘Don't Stop Believin,’' that Journey song stuck in my head after a tornado blew down my office. After a couple of weeks of it, I'm like, ‘Okay, I need to reset.’”
Richardson said that sometimes, a song can get stuck in your head when it’s tied to a memory. She said that she had been listening to Don’t Stop Believin’ the morning she drove to work to see her office after the tornado.
“It's so interesting to me, because I think what causes them — because I look at everything from a brain standpoint. And we have brain networks that are involved in perception and emotion and memory, and spontaneous thought. And I think those earworms, they get caught on one of those networks,” she said.
That means that a song can come back to you when you’re really relaxed, or maybe really stressed out. Leigh added that some people with obsessive-compulsive thoughts might be more prone to earworms. And if you’re trying to get a song out of your head, she said, the worst thing you can do is try to fight it.
Hear more from Leigh Richardson on the science behind earworms on KMOX’s “The Show”:
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