Sure, earworms are annoying – but they also can be helpful

In the dark corners of the internet hides a playlist of some of the most torturous, addictive music known to man. That's right, Spotify, SoundCloud and Apple Music all have playlists of "Baby Shark" remixes. Do doo, do do, do do, do.

Would you walk 500 miles to get away from that tune? Will your poker face crack the thousandth time it plays in your head? Does it remind you of someone you used to know? Do you value the sound of silence?

You aren't alone. These so-called earworms are annoying but useful. Research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in June helps illuminate the exact function these loops play.

"We can hear just a fragment of a piece of music and it can take us back. How does that happen?" said Petr Janata, a researcher at the University of California, Davis.

Music therapists and shrewd marketers have long taken advantage of music's ability to trigger memory. As research continues to illuminate how the process works, their techniques and goals are likely to become increasingly refined and targeted.

An amateur musician and self-described Dead Head, Janata says earworms help your brain encode and parse through daily memories and sensations that might not have anything to do with the moment when you first heard the tune. As it plays over and over in your head, you might come to associate memories or sensations different from those you experienced on first listening.

These musical fragments became a kind of sorting mechanism that triggers clearer recall at a later date, especially when the tune plays once more, according to the study "Spontaneous Mental Replay of Music Improves Memory for Incidentally Associated Event Knowledge."

In general, musicians and scientists alike have concluded that faster music with simple, repetitive melodies and harmonies is more likely to loop in the brain.

"Short, melodic phrases combined with a perfect harmonic progression are perfect for this," said composer Nancy Galbraith, whose music is premiered and performed by ensembles around the country.

Galbraith differentiates between musical "hooks," a fragment designed to catch the ear, and earworms. Many earworms come from song hooks, but not all hooks become earworms.

She pointed to the hit musical "Hamilton" as an example of a work filled with effective hooks, many of which evolved into earworms. "My Shot" pops into her head from time to time, she said, along with the theme song from the Netflix show "House of Cards."

"Tchaikovsky was a really great hook writer, but we don't really call them that in classical music," she said. "Personally, I don't associate them with anything specific. It's more of an emotion or sensation."

This often can involve pushing songwriters to create hooks or earworms reminiscent of past styles.

"It's becoming more and more pervasive," he said. "In the end, record labels are marketers at heart. It's not about distribution today thanks to streaming. It's about marketing."

Music therapists use music's ability to trigger a range of emotional states with their patients. According to Brittany Meyer, a neurologic music therapist at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, music's ability to activate various parts of the brain simultaneously makes it a useful tool for rebuilding and strengthening pathways in the brain.

"Repetition is really great for creating earworms," Meyer said. "And we know that music is great for both encoding and retrieving memories."

She explained that music can trigger reactions in both the hippocampus, which plays a role in learning and memory, and the amygdala, which is involved in experiencing emotions. So listening to the same music at a later date can trigger the same emotions as when the listener last experienced the music.

Janata's recent study found that music can function as a targeted memory aid. That means learning names or new faces or places could one day be paired with an individual tune, almost like a personalized musical tag.

Janata is exploring that idea in his research and attempting to observe how the brain responds to musical stimuli and earworms using neural imaging technology.

"It raises the question: Can this be deployed in a targeted way, taking novel pieces of music (and) pairing earworms with must-be-remembered information? Could this serve as a memory aid?