How to Get a Song Un-Stuck from Your Head

If you ever get an annoying song stuck in your head, it can be maddening, can't it? Like auditory hiccups, you just want it to stop. So I thought I'd share a trick that works, for me anyway.

First, find a source of music. Radio, iPod, Pandora, whatever, you just need some way to put other music in your ears. "But wait, I've already tried that", you say. But wait, there's more! Here's the trick: while playing the external music, try on purpose to recall the annoying song. It works best when the external, real music is kind of similar to, but distinctly different from, whatever's stuck in your head. By this I mean, if it's rock, go for different rock. If it's jazz, different jazz. In fact you can even use other songs by the same artist, but what really seems to matter most is that the tempo differs.

It's kind of a combination of two other tricks. One common cure is to find a copy of whatever it is, and play that, the other being to play something different and try to 'dislodge' the bothersome tune.

In the first approach, the idea seems to be "let's have it done with by hearing it end, in reality". Your mind is producing 'A', and you apply 'A' to your ears, and you hope to mesh up what happens at your ears with what happens in your mind, namely, that the song will stop.

The latter approach seems to hinge on the notion that, "if I hear something else, it will go away". Your mind is producing 'A', so you apply 'B' to your ears, and to really drive 'A' out, you focus your mind on 'B'.

The difference with what I'm advocating is that you actually try to mentally reinforce the annoying song while hearing something different. Your mind is producing 'A', you apply 'B' to your ears, but while hearing 'B', you really, really try to imagine 'A' some more.

Ok, hopefully it's clear what I'm describing now. Now you can be done with this post if you like.

Really? Still here? Ok, I think the deal is that, if annoying song 'A' is stuck in your head, you have this group of neurons that represents 'A', and that somehow a group like this can get in a pattern of activation that is self-sustaining. I think approach #1 seldom works, because it doesn't challenge the guilty neural assembly. If anything, it just encourages it. I think approach #2 works better, because at a higher level, you do make your brain switch the focus of attention to another, different neural grouping, one for some other song, but this doesn't necessarily mean that the 'A' group activity is disrupted. It's just a palliative for the consciousness, to divert attention. Once the substitute song is over, if group-A is still firing, you get the dreaded song back again. But if you try to recall 'A' while hearing 'B', this encourages group 'A' to try to assimilate the input from your ears, but the input from your ears is something else, doesn't match, and this disrupts the pattern of activity. If there is some specific quality of a pattern of activity that can make it self sustaining, this method stands a chance of driving the neural state off that self-sustaining track.

btw, had you guessed? I'm reading Oliver Sacks' "Musicophilia" right now.