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Scientists Study Getting an Unwanted Tune Out of Your Head
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Richard Gray reports that scientists have found a way to help anyone plagued by those annoying tunes that lodge themselves inside our heads and repeat on an endless loop — when snippets of a catchy song inexplicably play like a broken record in your brain. The solution can be to solve some tricky anagrams to force the intrusive music out of your working memory allowing the music to be replaced with other more amenable thoughts. 'The key is to find something that will give the right level of challenge,' says Dr Ira Hyman, a music psychologist at Western Washington University who conducted the research. 'If you are cognitively engaged, it limits the ability of intrusive songs to enter your head.' Hyman says that the problem, called involuntary memory retrieval, is that something we can do automatically like driving or walking means you are not using all of your cognitive resource, so there is plenty of space left for that internal jukebox to start playing. Dr Vicky Williamson, a music psychologist at Goldsmiths, University of London, says that the most likely songs to get stuck are those that are easy to hum along to or sing and found that that Lady Gaga was the most common artist to get stuck in people's heads, with four of her catchy pop songs being the most likely to become earworms – Alejandro, Bad Romance, Just Dance and Paparazzi. Other surveys have reported Abba songs such as Waterloo, Changes by David Bowie or the Beatles' Hey Jude."
great ... now i got Hey Jude stuck in my head
I'm at work right now. I should be programming. Instead, I'm being distracted with Springtime for Hitler (from The Producers) driving me crazy all morning. Get it out!
(Ok, yes, also I'm writing tests, which are boring, so his hypothesis probably *is* right: I could drive that song out if I were working on something that actually engaged my brain and made me want to devote all my brainpower to it.)
Though I don't listen to pop music, I've found it often to be quite invasive. But I have easily gotten it out of my head by actually singing it, might be some sort of internal thought process that needs to be executed. But again, just some guy's anecdote.
I would have thought being injured and fearing for your life would be enough to drive a song out of your mind, but apparently not! Though I wonder if shock might bring on this sort of "looping" in your mind, focusing on something else as a form of escapism.
Obligatory xkcd
There was a similar study long ago not dealing with how to get the song out alone, but also what the cause of the song being stuck was. The majority of cases tended to be related to the brain not being able to remember or work out a part of the song. That study also gave the easiest remedy to the issue: Listen to the song from start to finish without interruption. In a majority of their test cases, the playing of the song jogged the memory and filled in the gaps allowing the brain to move on to other things.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I hope you get William Shatner's "Rocket Man" stuck in your head for weeks.
This should do the trick.
Some of the easiest songs to get stuck in your head (as used by the researchers)
Alejandro – Lady Gaga
Bad Romance – Lady Gaga
Call me Baby – Carly Rae Jepsen.
Single Ladies – Beyoncé
She Loves You – The Beatles
I Wanna Hold Your Hand – The Beatles
She Loves You – The Beatles
SOS – Rihanna
You Belong with Me – Taylor Swift
Apparently She Loves You is such a catchy song that it gets stuck in your head twice.
A gut goes to the doctor and says he has " She's a Lady " playing over and over and over in his head. The doctor says, you may be suffering from Tom Jones disease. The guy asks, is that common? The doctor reply's, well, It's Not Unusual .......
* Carthago Delenda Est *
One of my (so far unused) fake headlines:
"Music 'Stuck in Head' is Theft, According to RIAA Chief"
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
I've spent a lot of time on hold waiting for tech support over the years. The absolute worst was a vendor who had a CD with the theme songs for nine different sitcoms. Spent over an hour and a half one day listening to the theme from Friends, Mad About You, The Simpsons, etc.
The best ever was when I called Symantec about fifteen years ago. Their 'Muzak on hold' machine had broken and someone had run out to their car in the parking lot and brought in their Sony Discman to plug into the phone system. The CD in the player was Bill Cosby's 'Wonderfulness' album. By the time tech support finally picked up the phone I was in a pretty good mood. Only good experience I ever had with Symantec tech support.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Obviously not enough Slashdotters have had children
The prerequisite to that would be that slashdotters get a date. Not likely to happen on a large scale.