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So earworms, those songs that get stuck in your head, do have a purpose, even if mildly annoying, according to some recent research.
The paper, “Spontaneous Mental Replay of Music Improves Memory for Incidentally Associated Event Knowledge,” was published online in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Co-authors are Janata and Benjamin Kubit, a postdoctoral researcher in cognitive neuroscience, both of the UC Davis Department of Psychology, and Center for Mind and Brain.
They worked with about 30 people in three different experiments working with music and films. They noted how many people reported songs being replayed in their head and memory of different scenes of films.
The result is that those earworms, the songs that kept getting replayed in their heads, also triggered better memory, remembering more details, of those film scenes that they were associated with.
So those earworms are not just annoying little artefacts of our brain they are helping our brains build associative memories of related scenes. Good news for jingles of tv shows and bad news because we can now skip over them with streaming services!
Andy publishes a quick hit every weekday on all things the brain, behaviour, and business. Please follow to receive your daily dose.
Andy is author of leading brains Review a monthly e-magazine on all things the brain, behaviour, and business.
