The earworm is to blame: why Christmas songs get "stuck" in your head and what to do about it

Do Christmas songs play endlessly in your head until you feel sick? When you hear a fragment of a song, it seems to get stuck in your head. The earworm is to blame.

Unfortunately, you can't get rid of it forever, but there are solutions that will temporarily help free your brain. After all, the music that plays around you gets into the center of your memory, and like an old record, only one fragment is played in your head. Cosmos wrote about how to deal with an earworm.

The temporal lobe is responsible for recalling intrusive music. This is the part of the brain that is closest to the ears and processes all sounds - birds chirping, car horns, people talking, or Christmas songs - and is responsible for encoding them into memory.

Therefore, when you listen to a song, the parts of the brain that are responsible for sounds can recall the melody, regardless of whether it is playing. It is these encoded memories that are important for the earworm to return again and again: the more the song is heard, the more likely it is to "stick." In the same way, Christmas tunes "play" in your head because they are heard in almost every store.

There are only three methods that will help you defeat an earworm. Don't forget that they are all temporary, so it can return with a new memory of the song.

• Usually, the chorus is the most memorable. Therefore, Cosmos recommends listening to the entire audio track.
• Remembering another tune can also help get rid of an intrusive song. By the way, according to a 2014 study, this method is the most commonly used.
• Chewing gum disrupts the processes by which a song is played over and over again in your head. This conclusion was reached at the University of Reading.

Mostly, we remember similar melodic forms with a similar tempo, but also unique sound intervals or repetitions that attract a lot of attention.

It turned out that among Americans, the most common song that suddenly starts playing in their heads is "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga, and the Christmas hit of all time is "All I Want For Christmas Is You" by Mariah Carey.

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