Stopping Ear Worms

Ear worms are those songs that get stuck in your head, playing over, and over, and ...

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/how-to-get-beyonc-out-of-your-head-the-scientific-solution/274333/

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According to music psychologist Ira Hyman, who recently published a paper on earworm science in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, songs function much like puzzles in our brains: Music is catchy because its patterns and rhythms engage our minds like a crossword puzzle would. Listening to it -- really hearing songs' lyrics, particularly when they come in the form of a repetitive chorus -- requires some concentration, but not much of it.

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there may, scientists say, be a way to stop them. Hyman and his colleagues figured that if earworms function like puzzles, they might be vanquished by puzzles, too. After conducting tests on a group of (hopefully extremely well-compensated) test subjects, the researchers determined that cognitive subterfuge is the best way to rid the mind of sticky songs. To defeat an earworm, they suggest, you just have to fool your brain into solving another puzzle -- a non-musical puzzle. The best way to do that? Give it actual puzzles to concentrate on. Do a quick crossword. Tackle an anagram. Spend a few minutes, even, reading a novel. Replace the earworm with another worm, tricking your mind out of its need to finish what it started by giving it something else -- something simple, but not too simple -- to focus on.

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