It has happened to you thousands of times, and today you are going to discover what is the scientific explanation why our brain keeps looping some songs, even if you don’t like them
You don’t know how, when or why it started, but there you have it, a song repeating itself in a loop, stuck to your head. It will have happened to you thousands of times. It will continue to happen to you throughout your life because, although you may believe that this only happens with the songs that you like and that it is due to this reason, reality has shown you several times that you can also paste those that you like least, or even hate. And that makes you even more nervous.
According to science, the proper explanation is far from it with the brain’s countenance and personality. Although there is no conclusive study or absolute certainty, the psychologist Alejandro Vara points out that it is closely related to the functioning of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). People who suffer from it are more prone to this involuntary practice.
The brain needs to have a beginning and an end.
“In the end, the songs are like obsessions. Let’s say that the brain has been left half and wants to have the full experience. That is why it is there repeating it in a loop, trying to reach the end,” he explains. And it is that our brain needs things to have a beginning and an end. If, in addition, your personality tends to obsess or not be able to leave something in half, you will suffer much more from the despair of this type of situation.
Vara assures that the more you try to block the thought or resist that song you have in your head, the less it will be taken away since that obsessive behavior causes a paradoxical effect that increases the thought. So even if a song has stuck to your head that it’s not just that you don’t like it, it’s that you hate it, the best thing you can do is let yourself succumb to it.
What to do to end them
In addition, the psychologist explains that this is what usually happens in advertising, with summer songs, reggaeton songs, or political anthems. They are the ones that cause the most that you cannot get out of the loop since their simple, melodic, and repetitive rhythms manage to take over your mind. And as the public knows it, coupled with the fact that if you don’t like it, you’re going to be obsessed with getting it out of your head, and it’s going to go. Further, that’s why they don’t care that their song is, in a way, ridiculous.
What you have to do, explains Vara, is to give the brain the experience it is asking for and put on that song that you have repeated so many times throughout the day, or at least give it that ending that you are longing for so much to close the chapter and start with something else. If you want to remove it, the expert tells you to assume that it has reached your brain and start doing something else until “it goes away by itself. The more you try to rip it off, the more it persists.”