IF YOU鈥橰E familiar with the oeuvre of Britney Spears, the headline on this
page has probably triggered a pop song of the same name to start playing in your
head. If you鈥檙e unlucky, it may haunt you for hours or even days, repeating over
and over until you鈥檙e heartily sick of it. It happens to most people now and
then.
鈥淚 hear music in my head almost all the time,鈥� says Gabriela Imreh, a concert
pianist in Ewing, New Jersey. 鈥淚 hope I鈥檓 not going to be categorised to the
loony bin.鈥� Even though she plays classical music all day, Imreh can鈥檛 get
Mrs Robinson out of her head because she recently saw the play of
The Graduate at a London theatre. 鈥淚t鈥檚 been driving me crazy,鈥� she says.
But why does the mind annoy us like this? No one knows for sure, but it鈥檚
probably because the brain is better at holding onto information than it is at
knowing what information is important. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a manifestation of an aspect of
memory which is normally an asset to us, but in this instance it can be a
nuisance,鈥� says Roger Chaffin, a psychologist at the University of
Connecticut.
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This eager acquisitiveness may have helped our ancestors remember important
oral histories heard round the campfire. Today, students use it to learn new
material, and musicians rely on it to memorise complicated pieces. But when this
useful function goes awry it can get you stuck on a tune. Unfortunately, frothy,
repetitive pop tunes are, by their very nature, more likely to stick than
something more inventive.
The annoying playback probably originates in the auditory cortex, the
鈥渟truggling musician鈥� of the brain. Located just inside the temple, this region
handles both listening and playback of music and other sounds. Neuroscientist
Robert Zatorre of McGill University in Montreal proved this two years ago when
he asked volunteers to replay the theme from the TV show Dallas in
their heads. Brain imaging studies showed that this reprise activated the same
region of the auditory cortex as when the people heard the song.
Not every stored musical memory emerges into consciousness, however. The
frontal lobe of the brain gets to decide which thoughts get airtime and which
ones become basement tapes. But it can get tired or depressed, which is when
people most commonly suffer from song-in-head syndrome and other intrusive
thoughts, says Susan Ball, a clinical psychologist at Indiana University School
of Medicine in Indianapolis. And once the unwanted song surfaces, it鈥檚 hard to
stuff it back down into the subconscious. 鈥淭he more you try to suppress a
thought, the more you get it,鈥� says Ball. 鈥淲e call this the pink elephant
phenomenon.鈥� Tell the brain not to think about pink elephants, and it鈥檚
guaranteed to do so, she says.
At their extreme, frontal lobe problems can lead to obsessive-compulsive
disorder (OCD), in which repetitive songs and other thoughts (鈥淒id I turn off
the stove?鈥�) can cause severe emotional distress. OCD can be debilitating
because it involves other brain regions, and produces a level of anxiety that is
absent in people merely stuck on a particular song. But the two phenomena both
involve the frontal lobe, Zatorre and Ball agree, and therapies designed to
disarm obsessive thoughts may also help purge the mind of stuck songs.
For those not severely afflicted, simply avoiding certain kinds of music can
help. 鈥淚 know certain pieces that are kind of sticky to me, so I will not play
them in the early morning for fear that they will run around in my head all
day,鈥� says Steven Brown, who trained as a classical pianist but is now a
neuroscientist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
He says he always has a song in his head and, even more annoying, his mind never
seems to make it all the way through. 鈥淚t tends to involve short fragments
between, say, 5 or 15 seconds. They seem to get looped, for hours sometimes,鈥� he
says.
Brown鈥檚 experience of repeated musical loops may represent a phenomenon
called 鈥渃hunking鈥�, in which people remember musical phrases as a single unit of
memory, says Caroline Palmer, a psychologist at Ohio State University in
Columbus. Most listeners have little choice about what chunks they remember.
Particular chunks may be especially sticky if you hear them often or if they
follow certain predictable patterns, such as the chord progression of rock 鈥榥鈥�
roll music. Palmer鈥檚 research shows that the more a piece of music conforms to
these patterns, the easier it is to remember. That鈥檚 why you鈥檙e more likely to
be haunted by the tunes of Britney Spears than J. S. Bach.
But this ability can be used for good as well as annoyance. Imreh says she
uses her memory for certain musical patterns to reinforce her knowledge of a
particular piece. Teachers too can tap into memory reinforcement by setting
their lessons to music. For example, students who heard the preamble to the US
Constitution set as the lyrics to a catchy song remembered the words better than
those who simply read them, says Sandra Calvert, a psychologist at Georgetown
University in Washington DC.
This sort of memory enhancement may even explain the origin of music. Before
the written word could be used to record history, people memorised it in songs,
says Leon James, a psychologist at the University of Hawaii. And music may have
taken on an even more important role. 鈥淎ll music has a message,鈥� he says. 鈥淭his
message functions to unite society and to standardise the thought process of
people in society.鈥�
But is it true that all we have to show for centuries of cultural evolution
is pop music and a society standardised by the music of Britney Spears? OK,
maybe I鈥檓 being cynical. I鈥檓 just feeling edgy because I keep hearing this one
song over and over. I need to tell my frontal lobe not to think about it.
Oops, I did it again.