The Impact of Earworms on Sleep Quality

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Transcript

Have you ever wondered if songs that get stuck in your head during the day just keep playing in there on repeat and mess with your sleep at night? I didn't until I read this recent study. Welcome back to 30 studies to change your life. Sleep week continued. If you've ever turned your toothbrushing routine into a mirror dance party, this takeaway at the end is going to be for you. Shira. Today we're talking about the dreaded earworm. Songs that get stuck in your head. And you hate that they cannot get out. If you dry, they still will not get out. even the actual song.

Anyone who experienced earworms any time over the course of the night, either right before bed, upon wake up, or sometime during the night itself. They reported greater daytime sleep neas, insomnia, and worse overall sleep quality. But surveys are weak evidence, so next they set up a randomized experiment in a sleep lab. Before bed, they had people listen to these three songs at low volume, either instrumental versions or the full ones. You'd guess that the lyrical versions would lead to more earworms, right? Wrong! It turned out that the instrumental versions produced more earworms, and those who had the earworms took almost twice as long to fall asleep and woke up more at night.

But why? The researchers theorized two overlapping possibilities. First, instrumental songs stay more in the background, inducing a lower attentional state in your brain, which has previously been shown to increase earworms. Or with the instrumental songs, the brain may have gotten stuck trying to fill in the words. But how do we know that it was actually earworms playing in their head while they were sleeping found specific areas of the brain that are active while earworms are playing in her head while awake. And in this study, they used an EEG and found that the people who reported earworms at night actually had that same region of the brain a lot more active while asleep. So, takeaway time. Even if listening to happy, catchy music at night improves your mood, it might be hurting your sleep even if you don't realize that it's doing it. And if you want to prank your friend by getting a song stuck in their head, try using an instrumental version of the song. I take no blame.

Additional notes

Caption: 😴💣the sleep disruptor nobody knows about… what’s your worst earworm-inducing song? PMID: 34105416 #science #sleep #sleeptok #sciencetok #learnontiktok #nerd

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