In this video, I want to talk about a serious disorder that affects billions of people worldwide.
While many treatments are available, some of them better than others, they simply result
in remission from the condition at best, with recurrences happening early and often after
treatment.
It’s called Stuck Song Syndrome.
I’ve had “The Song That Doesn’t End” in my head for three days!
You know the one.
Think of the last time you got a song stuck in your head.
What was it?
And how long did it take you to get it out?
There are a lot of different names for songs that get stuck in your head – sticky music,
brainworms and most commonly, earworms, which was originally coined by German scientists
who called them “Ohrwürmer” – and it seems like everyone has a different method
of getting rid of them.
Luckily, there are brave researchers working to understand and treat this horribly annoying
condition.
Neuroscientists call earworms involuntary musical imagery, or INMI, as opposed to voluntary
musical imagery, when you sing a song in your head by choice.
One study showed that over 90% of people suffer from earworms at least once a week, with about
a third of people dealing with it every day.
A majority of the time, earworms consist of just fragments of familiar songs that repeat
over and over, rather than being a complete song.
And that helps us understand what causes brainworms and how to treat them.
Psychologists call it the Zeigarnik effect, where people remember a task that was interrupted
or not completed better than they remember a completed task.
It was first noted in
waiters who could remember the details of outstanding orders, but not paid, closed orders.
For earworms, this could mean you’re more likely to get a song stuck in your head if
you hear some of it but not all of it.
And since we hear music in a bunch of different settings, like the radio, TV shows and commercials,
and grocery store background noise, there’s really no way to actively avoid getting an
earworm.
Sorry…
But!
Luckily, the Zeigarnik effect also gives us an idea of how to get a stuck songs out of
your head: complete them.
A lot of people do this intuitively.
When a song is stuck in their heads, no matter how much they dislike it, they put the song
on and listen to it from beginning to end.
Research shows us there may be an easier way.
If you can voluntarily play the end of the song in your head, you might be able to finally
get it out of your brain.
The Zeigarnik effect also tells us why some songs are so much stickier than others.
Tunes like “The Song that Gets on Everybody’s Nerves,” or the chorus of Rihanna’s “Umbrella”
are usually sung as a repeating round, so they can easily get stuck.
But the most famous of these songs is of course “It’s a Small World”.
The tune played on a ride of the same name at several Disney parks.
It’s an uplifting song about world unity, but it’s repetitive nature makes it extremely
mentally invasive, uniting the world in their deep hatred of the tune.
How do you get a song out of your head, if it doesn’t have an ending to sing?
If only I knew.
My best advice is try replacing it with a song that does end by voluntarily playing
the new song in your head over and over again.
Once the second song is thoroughly stuck, play the end of it to get it out.
And whatever you do, don’t think about The Song
That Doesn’t End!