Why Ear-worms Get Stuck in Your Head

We all get a sensation when a song, for no apparent reason, refuses to leave your head — in fact we’re no strangers to the dreaded “ear-worm.” But a new study published in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts reveals a fascinating insight into ear-worms, and why some songs are better than others in sticking in our heads by investigating the actual elements of the song that make it catchy in the first place.

To do this, most frequent ear-worms of the participants were entered into a database and compared to songs that had never been reported as an ear-worm at all. The melodic features of the tunes were then analyzed, revealing that ear-worm tunes were typically those songs that have overall melodic shapes common in Western pop music. A classic example of a common contour (音调的升降曲线) pattern is heard in Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, where the first phrase rises in pitch and the second falls. This makes the tune easy to remember and has been exploited in many other nursery rhymes, but also in pop music.

In addition to the melodic shape, the other ingredient to the ear-worm formula is the unusual interval structure. The aim of this is to surpass the listener’s expectations of an average pop song, showing unexpected leaps or more repeated notes than usual. “Our findings show that you can, to some extent, predict which songs are going to get stuck in people’s heads based on the song’s melodic content,” says one of the researchers, “This could help song-writers or advertisers write a jingle (短歌) everyone will remember for days or months afterwards.”

The authors conclude that studies of ear-worms can help explain how the brain works, and improve our understanding in how perception, emotions, memory and spontaneous thoughts behave in different people.

7 . Your Life Is Better Than You Think

The undeniable popularity of self-help books, wellness podcasts, and happiness workshops reflects the constant human desire to make life better.     1         

While we may have a loving family, a good place to live, and a decent job, we often fail to notice those things. It’s not because we are ungrateful or stupid, but it’s because of a basic feature of our brain, known as habituation.

Habituation is the tendency of neurons to fire less and less in response to things that are constant. You enter a room filled with roses and after a short while, you cannot detect their scent any longer; and just as you get used to the smell of fresh flowers, you also get used to a loving relationship, to a promotion, to a nice home, to a wonderful work of art. Like the front page of a daily newspaper, your brain cares about what recently changed, not about what remained the same.     2     You habituate to it—you fail to notice and respond to elements of your life which you previously found amazing.

    3     That is, you can suddenly start perceiving and responding to things to which you have become desensitized.

The key is taking small breaks from your daily life. For example, when people return home from a long business trip, they often find their old life has “reshined.” Ordinary things suddenly seem amazing. If something is constant, we often assume (perhaps unconsciously) that it is there to stay, and as a result, we focus our attention and effort on the next thing on our list.     4     If it is good at its core, it may just reshine. This is why time away, however short, will enable you to perceive your life with fresh eyes—and to break up reality.

8 . Pricing is managers’ biggest marketing headache. It’s where they feel the most pressure to perform and the least certain that they are doing a good job. All successful pricing efforts share two qualities: The policy combines well with the company’s overall marketing strategy, and the process is well-organized as a whole.

A company’s pricing policy sends a message to the market—it gives customers an important sense of a company’s philosophy. Consider Saturn Corporation (a wholly owned company of General Motors). Saturn wants to let consumers know that it is friendly and easy to do business with. Part of this concept is conveyed through initiatives such as inviting customers to the factory to see where the cars are made and sponsoring evenings at the dealership that combine a social event with training on car maintenance. But Saturn’s pricing policy sends a strong message as well. Can a friendly, trusting relationship be established with customers if a salesperson uses all the negotiating tricks in the book to try to separate them from that last $100? Of course not. Saturn has a “no hassle, no haggle” policy which removes the possibility of conflicts between dealer and potential customer. Customers have an easier time buying a car knowing that the next person in the door won’t negotiate a better deal.

Of course, there are typically many participants in the pricing process: Accounting provides cost estimates; marketing communicates the pricing strategy; sales provides specific customer input; production sets supply boundaries; and finance establishes the requirements for the entire company’s financial health. Input from diverse sources is necessary. However, problems arise when the philosophy of wide participation is carried over to the price-setting process without strong coordinating mechanisms (协调机制). For example, if the marketing department sets list prices, the salespeople negotiate discounts in the field, the legal department adjusts prices if necessary to prevent breaking the laws or contractual agreements, and the people filling orders negotiate price adjustments for delays in shipment, everybody’s best intentions usually end up bringing about less than the best results. In fact, the company may actually lose money on some orders.

With this tour, you’ll have half a day of adventure activities in the desert.

You’ll start your tour by driving to a scenic spot on the top of a tall sand dune (沙丘) for a chance to take photos of the area. On top of a sand dune, you’ll have the chance to slide down the side by sandboarding. From here, you’ll get ready for hitting some dunes in a four-wheel drive vehicle. Next, you’ll hop on a quad bike and have time to drive around the desert in the open air. Finally, you’ll have a camel ride around a small part of the desert.

What’s included

Pickup and drop-off

20 minutes of sandboarding

35 minutes of dune bashing

25 minutes of quad biking

10-minute camel ride

Water and soft drinks

A drive through a camel farm

Additional information

Requires a high level of physical fitness.

Not suitable for children between 0 and 5.

Children under 18 must be accompanied by an adult.

Tours starting after noon include a BBQ dinner with sweets and fruits, which costs an additional US$ 45/person only.

Science in Images

Oyster mushrooms feature in cuisines around the world, but they should be off the menu for hungry worms -- which these delicious mushrooms will kill and eat. Now researchers finally know how they do it.

A study published in Science Advances details how oyster mushrooms use a particular poisonous substance to freeze and get rid of mushroom-eating roundworms called nematodes (线虫). The mushrooms, which grow on nutrient-poor dead wood, then     1     the worms for nutrition.

“Nematodes happen to be the most     2     animals these mushrooms encounter. So I think,     3    , this cross-kingdom interaction is very interesting,” says study senior author.

The study team of geneticists, biochemists and biologists had previously found that oyster mushrooms release an unidentified poisonous substance that will somehow     4     the worms within minutes and cause a chemical element to flow into their cells, killing them. This     5     differs from those used by other meat-eating mushrooms and could be unique to oyster mushrooms.

For their new work, the researchers grew and analyzed samples of the mushroom’s tissue, finding no noticeable poison even when they broke it up. They reasoned that whatever was killing the worms must be a kind of     6     compound that disappears into air when disturbed. When they damaged the oyster mushroom tissue again and     7     analyzed the nearby air, they finally found a nerve gas that turned out to be contained with tiny, special-shaped structures on the mushroom surface. When nematodes touch the mushrooms, these structures     8     their gas, disturbing the worms’ cell walls to cause immobility and death. The worm is then digested by the mushrooms.

Before this study, “we underestimated the     9     to which wild mushrooms defend against or consume nematodes,” notes Nick Talbot, a geneticist at Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, England. The study demonstrates “a very     10     approach,” he adds. “These organisms are really difficult to work on, and Dr. Hsueh is showing that you can do some really amazing work with them.”