Chewing gum kills earworms

[FLPanhandle]

How Chewing Gum Can Stop Unwanted Songs From Playing In Your Head

An “earworm” is a song that won’t stop playing in your head. It’s annoying for sure, and if it goes on too long the effect can be a bit maddening. A new study shows that it’s possible to chew away the earworms with a couple sticks of your favorite gum.

How this works is intriguing. Rather than distracting your brain from the insidious tune, the study suggests that chewing gum hijacks the same auditory mechanism your brain uses to replay it.

The researchers ran a few experiments to test the theory, including a comparison of chewing gum with “tapping”, an in-vogue self-help practice that purportedly distracts the brain away from ruminating on unwanted thoughts. The results showed that tapping was more effective than doing nothing but was significantly less effective than chewing gum when it comes to controlling earworms.

Chewing gum, in the parlance of this study, is “an articulatory motor activity” that “interferes with the experience of ‘hearing’ musical recollections.” In other words, there’s something about chewing gum that disrupts the involuntary memory process that won’t turn off no matter how hard we try to “think” it off.

This finding underscores an insight that’s been gaining momentum in cognitive science overall: trying to wholesale delete or even significantly modify a thinking process is often less effective than hacking a way around it.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2015/05/10/how-chewing-gum-can-stop-unwanted-songs-from-playing-in-your-head/


My wife always complains about getting songs stuck in her head. I'm letting her know about this hack.

[underpants]

1. But what if I need to walk somewhere?

I had Cyndi Lauper"s "She Bop" stuck in my head on my run on Saturday. No idea where I heard it.

I am often a victim of ear worms.

Thanks

[TexasProgresive]

3. BAHAHAHA! underpants can't walk and chew gum at the same time.

[PeaceNikki]

4. I constantly have earworms. CONSTANTLY

[font size=1]Mahna Mahna[/font]

[SheilaT]

2. I often have songs stuck in my head.

But I find in very easy to get a different song to play.

[PeaceNikki]

5. Me, too. Life is a musical.

[Politicalboi]

6. I thought it was for this kind of earworm

<a href="http://imgur.com/wpVu7uD"><img src="" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>

Chekov could use some gum.

[shanti]

7. thanks, very interesting....

i have a couple of earworms in my head now that i can't get rid of! it happens almost daily after listening to any kind of vocal music. that's why i can only listen to instrumental music anymore, which is very limiting to me.

not really a big gum chewer though, but i'll give it a go.

my earworms:

[NV Whino]

8. But then its hell getting that gum out of your ear.

[djean111]

9. Hmmmmm...right now I have three earworms - Cheap Trick's I Want You to Want Me, Willie Nelson's

Across the Borderline, and Shut Up and Dance With Me. They take turns, and - better than gum!