by Ryan

If you've ever heard the song "It's a Small World" then you have also probably gotten it lodged in your brain.  We've all had various tunes stuck in our heads from time to time.  Some of those songs even have the ability to conjure up memories of different times, places, and events.  There is a new study out that underscores the notion that a song can evoke powerful memories.  The really interesting thing it reveals is that you don't even have to hear the song for it to come bubbling up from your sub-conscience, and most people actually have the ability to 'hear' songs even when they aren't being played.

The music memory study involved 124 people, who had an average age of 19.  They were asked to look through a list of old songs and choose the one track that evoked the strongest memory.  The people were divided into four groups:  The first saw the title, the second saw the lyrics, the third saw the album cover, and the fourth listened to a fragment of the song.  The participants were then asked to rank the vividness of their memories.  There was a lot of success in cojuring memories from each group - especially from the second.  Researcher Dr. Cady says "music is a huge cue".  You can test this theory right now if you'd like, but just be careful, you may have these songs bouncing around in your mind for the rest of the day:

"The Theme from Gilligan's Island"

"Mission:  Impossible"

"We Will Rock You"

"The Macarena"

Those tunes, along with "Small World", were cited in a 2001 study by James Kellaris at the University of Cincinnati as among the most common songs that get stuck in peoples' heads.  Kellaris found that a whopping 99 percent out of the 1,000 people he surveyed reported to having at least one of those tracks lodged in their heads, and nearly half of them said that it occurs frequently.  Kellaris says that "a simple songs with lots of repetition and an unexpected shift is the most likely to fix itself in your mind".  Down the road, it may create a "cognitive itch" - which we know as thing that bugs you all day long.  Apparently the only way to 'scratch' that itch is to mentally rehearse the tune that's responsible for it.  That process may begin involuntarily, as the brain detects something 'exceptional' in the musical stimulus.  The mental repetition may exacerbate the 'itch' so much so that the individual feels trapped in a cycle.  Scientest are beginning to figure out exactly what it is that's behind all this.  A study released earlier this year employed brain scans which revealed that musical memories are stored in the brain's auditory cortex.  It also confirmed something we all know already - that we continue to 'hear' songs after the music stops.  The way they determined this is by playing music in the scanner then pressing the mute button.  People coudn't help but to continue the song in their head, and when they did their auditory cortex remained active.  There is a slight difference between the way your brain remembers instrumentals and music with lyrics.  When researchers pressed the mute button during the word-free them freom the Pink Panther, people redlied on a variety of different regions within the auditory cortex to fill in the blanks.  Fewer parts were required to continue "hearing" songs with words.  Which leads scientist to believe that lyrics could very well be the focus of the memory.