Why do we get 'hooked' on certain songs?

Songs we have to listen to again and again, melodies that we are mentally humming throughout the day, songs that we sing softly whenever we have the chance... If there is one characteristic that defines the potential that music has in our lives, it is that it hooks us, it hits us without any kind of sympathy.

It happens, of course, with many simple and catchy melodies, but even the fruits of the greatest virtuosity. technical and more complex musical pieces are capable of making us think about them all the little while. Simply, there are melodies that are practically tattooed in our brain. Why is this happening?

When the music remains it does not leave our head

Some experts refer to the phenomenon of catchy music as a product of the activity of "earworms", or earworms. The image of parasites making their nest in our brain and leaving their eggs there is quite unpleasant, but fortunately it is only a metaphor. The idea is that music enters our nervous system through the ears and once there modifies the way our neurons communicate with each other creating a dynamic similar to a loop.

In this way, it is enough that at a specific moment an external stimulus enters our brain (in this case, a melody) so that its effects are perpetuated over time, leaving behind a trace Sure: our propensity to reproduce that stimulus over and over again, turned into a memory.

How does this happen? The science behind catchy tunes

A few years ago, Dartmouth College researchers shed some light on the mystery of how it can be that Our brain simulate again and again the input of the melody to our nervous system when our ears have already stopped registering this type of stimulus.

An experiment to recognize what happens in the brain

To do this, they conducted an experiment: having a series of volunteers listen to music while their brain is scanned in real time to see which areas of the brain are activated more than others in each moment.

With this objective in mind, the participants were first asked to choose a series of songs that they found to be family members and others who have never heard, so that each person could listen to a list of musical pieces personalized. Once the volunteers had started listening to the music, the researchers included a surprise that had not been explained before: in some moments, the music would stop playing for three or four seconds.

In this way, the researchers They were able to verify that the part of the brain responsible for processing information related to music is the so-called auditory cortex, and that it continues to be active during those moments in which the music stops whenever it is is familiar, while its activity is interrupted when what stops playing is music unknown. In other words, when music plays to us, our brain is responsible for filling in the blanks automatically, without our having to make an effort.

A musical echo that we cannot stop

What does the above tell us about that music that we cannot get out of our heads? In the first place, it tells us that the mental processes that we associate with the perception of sensory stimuli can go in the opposite direction to the typical one. That is, it can be produced from the brain in general to areas of the nervous system specialized in the processing of sound patterns, since it has been proven that our brain can "continue singing on its own account".

Second, this shows that external stimuli can leave a trace in our brain that, although at first we can get to ignore, they remain latent and can cause us to enter a loop, from In the same way that by stirring the water with a stick we can create eddies that remain even when we are no longer touching the Water.

Neurons that press "play" automatically

If our brain is responsible for reproducing the way in which our neurons of the auditory cortex were activated when we were listening to the music that entered our ears, it will also be able to create the chain reaction that is derived from this pattern of activation of several neurons coordinating with each other to process the music... which means that the necessary ingredients are mixed again so that the loop appears again in the future.

To find out why the loop originates, you will need to continue investigating, but most likely you will have to to do with the way in which certain stimuli create chemical bonds (more or less permanent) between neurons.