What makes a song get stuck in your head?
Earworm Express
What makes a song get stuck in your head?
You know that moment when a song sneaks into your brain and refuses to leave? You're brushing your teeth, doing homework, walking down the street — and there it is again, looping like a broken record. Scientists call these "earworms," and they've been trying to figure out why certain songs are such sticky little troublemakers.
Your brain has a special loop system for music, kind of like a practice track for rehearsing things you need to remember. When you're learning a phone number or trying to memorize lines for a play, this loop holds the information and plays it back to you. Songs hijack that same system — they slip into the rehearsal loop and hit "repeat" all on their own.
