- There's nothing nicer than a tune playing in your head
- until you can't turn it off.
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- The phenomenon has spanned the ages. In 1882, Mark Twain
wrote in a short story of an annoying "jingling rhyme" that became
indelibly lodged in the author's mind until he passed the curse along to
another hapless victim. This summer, a community board in Brooklyn has
called for a limit on the playing of the "Mr. Softee" jingle
by ice-cream trucks - a jingle that can be unbearably memorable for those
subjected to it for extended periods.
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- Research has helped define, but not explain, the experience.
-
- A recent study by the University of Cincinnati looked
at the affliction, which the author, James Kellaris, calls earworms from
the German word ohrwurm. The ear part is obvious, but the worm part is
not incidental. Dr. Kellaris, a consumer psychologist, says it conveys
the parasitic nature of the unending tunes, which lodge too deep in the
mental continuum to be easily ousted.
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- He found that some 98 percent of listeners will at one
time or another be bothered by a tune that will not leave their heads.
The study also found some common offenders, including the Kit-Kat jingle
("Gimme a break"), "Who Let the Dogs Out," Queen's
"We Will Rock You," the theme to "Mission: Impossible,"
"Y.M.C.A.," "Whoomp, There It Is," "The Lion Sleeps
Tonight" and "It's A Small World After All."
-
- The study also showed that musicians and those with compulsive
tendencies are the most afflicted.
-
- The 559 students used in the study had lots of trouble
with the Chili's jingle for its baby-back ribs and with the Baha Men song
"Who Let the Dogs Out." But Dr. Kellaris found that most often,
each person tends to be haunted by their demon notes.
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- There can be a positive side for some. The singer-songwriter
Neil Diamond says those repetitive notes that will not go away have spawned
some of his biggest hits.
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- "If I wasn't in the business of songwriting, I'd
probably be seeing a doctor," Mr. Diamond said. "I've tried everything
from cold showers to listening to other people's music, but nothing helps."
-
- Most of his songs spring from a melodic swatch of six
notes repeating in his mind. "I'll be driving or watching TV or having
lunch, and it just invades," he said. "It's a horrible obsession,
but it seems to have paid off."
-
- Graham Nash said the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
song "Black Notes" had a similar origin. "I was at a concert
with Crosby at Carnegie Hall in 1970," Mr. Nash said. "He ran
offstage to get Young and just left me hanging there. Well, I had nothing
to do, so I started playing a few notes that had been stuck in my head
for a few days. The notes soon became a verse and then an entire song,
right there."
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- The greater susceptibility of musicians may simply reflect
how much more music they listen to. But other research has shown that musical
training leads to changes in brain function and structure in regions like
the rostromedial prefrontal cortex, an area located behind the forehead
that is involved in the perception of melody. Some kind of self-perpetuating
stimulus of these circuits may explain why familiar tunes like "Y.M.C.A."
can literally become branded in the brain. Neural circuits for music perception
also appear in the temporal lobes, which is involved in more basic sound
processing.
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- Petr Janata, a research assistant professor at Dartmouth
who studies music and the brain, said the effect can be heightened when
sound is linked to motion. "The brain and the body get involved. When
we put specific dance to the music - like with the `Macarena' or `The Hustle'
- the whole body remembers the tune."
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- Repetition often helps to create a sticky song, as do
those whose melodies repeat or contain an element of surprise. "Our
jingle often ran on all three networks tons of times a day," said
John Clarke, chief advertising officer of Dr. Pepper/7Up. "And those
phrases were catchy. `I'm a Pepper, you're a Pepper, wouldn't you like
to be a pepper too?' "
-
- That jingle also ran longer than a jingle of 2003 would,
60 seconds compared with this year's 15. It was a simple tune, the perfect
ingredients for an earworm, Dr. Kellaris said.
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- Singing the song aloud can sometimes erase it.
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- "It's a familiar pattern of itching and scratching,"
Dr. Kellaris says. "The only way to `scratch' a cognitive itch is
to rehearse the start involuntarily, as the brain detects an incongruity
or something `exceptional' in the musical stimulus."
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- http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/12/science/12EAR.html?ex=
1061611200&en=dc0622ba1efe4221&ei=5070
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