The Surprising Scientific Link Between Dementia and Hit Songs by Elvis Presley, ABBA, and Spice Girls

Earworms can feel more annoying than helpful when you have one stuck in your head, but these catchy tunes helped researchers create a surprising scientific link between significant memory loss disorders, like dementia, and some of the catchiest hit songs by Elvis Presley, ABBA, and the Spice Girls. Sure, it might feel a bit burdensome to sing, Soooo, I’ll tell ya what I want, what I really really want, approximately 500 times a day.

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But it’s those types of inescapable riffs and hooks that are helping scientists develop a better understanding of the process behind and treatment of dementia.

Scientists Set Out To Connect Music and Memory

In June 2014, a research team from the University of Amsterdam published a since-deleted game called Hooked to gain a deeper understanding of the link between memory (and memory loss) and the catchy tunes that get stuck in our heads. The game utilized a “drop the needle” technique in which participants had to identify a song by a fragment from the middle of a song. Researchers chose audio to begin at the start of an identifiable section, writing, “Music will always start playing from the beginning of a structural section. Then the amount of time it takes a player to recognize the piece is a proxy for how easy that section is to recall, or in short, how catchy it is.”

This scientific connection between dementia and musical catchiness included hit songs by Elvis Presley, ABBA, and the Spice Girls. Other notable inclusions were Adele’s “Rumour Has It” and Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” All of these songs have signature sections that are readily identifiable to most participants. Scientists narrowed in on a song’s catchiness by recording how many seconds it took for a player to identify it.

Speaking to BBC in 2014, University of Amsterdam researcher Dr. Ashley Burgoyne said, “We do know that music has a very powerful effect on memory. More powerful than many other memory triggers. But the reasons for it aren’t completely understood. Why is it that there are certain pieces of music that you hear just a couple of times, and ten years later, you hear it again, and you may have forgotten the title and the artist, but the music comes back to you immediately?”

What This Connection Means For Mental Health Development

The fact that earworms can lodge themselves in people’s heads to where they remember the song years later by mere seconds of a song fragment is interesting. But it’s not necessarily something that requires extensive scientific research to prove. So, why is it important? According to Dr. Ashley Burgoyne, “There’s been some very nice research showing that if you can bring the favorite music of people who are suffering from dementia, it can really enliven them. These memories don’t seem to fade.”

“So, if we can have a better understanding of how that process works and identify the features of music that seem to lock [it] into long-term memory, then you can perhaps use that to make better clinical decisions about what music is going to be the most therapeutic.”

The next time you get an Elvis, ABBA, or Spice Girls song stuck in your head, just remember that there are potential benefits to your long-term mental health and memory as scientists gain a deeper understanding of how to manage dementia. And, of course, that’s what you want, what you really, really want.

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