Catchy Tunes Get Stuck in Auditory Cortex
Posted on March 9, 2005
The auditory cortex appears to be responsible for helping you remember the missing parts of songs and for making songs get stuck in your head. The BBC reports that researchers using functional magnetic resonance imaging measured brain activity while playing songs to human subjects. When brief gaps were left in songs that the subject was familiar with the auditory cortex helped the subject "remember" the gaps. If an unfamiliar song was played with gaps the auditory cortex did not help.
Scientists believe this could mean that the auditory cortex plays a role in audio storage as well as the original processing of incoming sounds.
Marketing firms and their often memorable advertising jingles are well aware of the power of this human brain function.