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What tune is going round your head (whether you like it or not)


mcbpete

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New scientist reported on a study into 'ear worms', which apparently is the term for music that you can't stop hearing in your head. They scanned the brains of participants to see if there were any structural differences between people with this problem and the 'normal' brain.

 

 

People who suffered earworms more frequently had thicker cortices in areas involved in auditory perception and pitch discrimination.

 

“Areas in the auditory cortex that we know are active when you actually listen to music seem to be physically different in people who are experiencing music that’s not even there,” says Stewart.

While this doesn’t shed any light on whether these differences in brain structure actually cause earworms, other differences were related to how the phenomenon affected people. Those who said they found earworms helpful for staying focused tended to have a larger hippocampus, an area involved in memory. The more people were annoyed by earworms, the more grey matter they had in the emotion-related temporal pole.

The differences were unrelated to how much musical training participants had, or how much they listened to music.

 

 

This is a single paper in a new area of research, so don't take it's findings or conclusions as the be all and end all on this matter. Still though relevant to thread.

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I have a song for an unrealized metal project that I never had lyrics for running through my head non stop. Despite the lack of lyrics the vocal melody is in there. It's been keeping me awake for the last two hours.

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