Song Stuck in Your Head? What Earworms Reveal About Health

SOURCES:

Elizabeth H. Margulis, professor, Princeton University, and director of the university’s Music Cognition Lab.

David Silbersweig, MD, chairman, Department of Psychiatry, and co-director, Institute for the Neurosciences, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston.

Michael K. Scullin, PhD, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, Baylor University, Waco, TX.

Elaine Jones, MD, , neurologist, Hilton Head, SC; fellow, American Academy of Neurology 

Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic: “Stuck in my head: Musical obsessions and experiential avoidance.” 

Consciousness and Cognition: “Tunes stuck in your brain: The frequency and affective evaluation of involuntary musical imagery correlate with cortical structure,” “Musical hallucinations, musical imagery, and earworms: a new phenomenological survey.”

PLOS One: “Sticky Tunes: How Do People React to Involuntary Musical Imagery?” 

Psychology of Music: “Musical activities predispose to involuntary musical imagery.” 

British Journal of General Practice: “Stuck song syndrome: musical obsessions – when to look for OCD.”

New Music Express: “Scientists name the ultimate earworm and explain what makes songs addictive.”

Harvard Gazette: “Why That Song is Stuck in Your Head.”

Music Perception: “Singing in the Brain: Investigating the Cognitive Basis of Earworms.”

Annals of General Psychiatry: “Major depression with musical obsession treated with vortioxetine: a case report.”

Brain: “Minds on replay: musical hallucinations and their relationship to neurological disease.”

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: “Want to block earworms from conscious awareness? B(u)y gum!”