A strange trick to silence an earworm

image: Piscine26/Shutterstock image: Piscine26/Shutterstock

Earworms are annoying. It's like a loop playing over and over, sometimes for hours or even days. Mostly, they're triggered by hearing the song, but sometimes my brain will just dredge one up randomly. One surprising way to stop the madness is to chew gum, according to research conducted in 2015 by the University of Reading.

"Chewing gum actually ties up what we call the sort of articulatory-motor planning system," University of Durham psychologist Kelly Jakubowski explains on Scientific American's Science Quickly podcast. "So in order to mentally rehearse words or songs, we need to actually, essentially, sort of mentally sing them. So if you're using your mouth, you can't actually kind of fully mentally sing them."

Temporarily interrupting short-term memory processes and the way we imagine sounds could potentially help quiet other intrusive thoughts.

"Interfering with our own 'inner speech' through a more sophisticated version of the gum-chewing approach may work more widely," said University of Reading psychologist Phil Beaman when the original study was released. "However more research is needed to see whether this will help counter symptoms of obsessive-compulsive and similar disorders."

Previously:
• 25 of the most potent TV commercial earworms ever, all in one video
• How to get rid of ear worms