2023-08-05 16:39:46
From ‘Italodisco’ by Kolors to ‘Mon amour’ by Annalisa, from ‘Pazza musica’ by Elodie and Mengoni to ‘Disco Paradise’ by Fedez, Annalisa and Article 31. Like every year, summer 2023 is also marked by success musical catchphrases, super catchy songs that inevitably remain in the head, rhythms that ‘infect’ the mind and which, unintentionally, once heard, we continue to hum for a while. Anglo-Saxon science has given them a name: earworm or ‘earworm’, also known as ‘cognitive itch’. “It’s a very common phenomenon, which also occurs for summer hits, when we can’t get a song or tune out of our minds, which even gets annoying. A phenomenon linked to brain mechanisms, which are also involved , albeit to varying degrees, in many neurological diseases”, explains Stefano Cappa, professor of Neurology at the University Institute of Higher Studies (Iuss) of Pavia to time.news Salute.
“In many neurological pathologies – continues the neuroscientist – there is a dysfunction of these cerebral systems, the so-called stereotypies or the tendency to repeat the same movements or the same words, a consequence of a disinhibition of the mechanisms underlying the cerebral cortex due to disease. In the case of the musical catchphrase it is not a pathology but the earworm occurs because our brain has maintained this atavistic mechanism”. The expert cites one example above all: Ravel’s Bolero: “It has a highly repetitive structure and we know that Ravel fell ill with a neurodegenerative disease a few years after composing it. Therefore – he underlines – it is conceivable that, at the era of his Bolero, already had some first clinical manifestations which, within the ambit of his musical genius, expressed themselves with a repetitive type structure”.
But is it possible to identify the elements of a piece that make it ‘get’ in your head? “Certainly there are very evident structures in music, such as the melody, which have a precise link with the functioning of our brain”. Just as an important role is played by dopamine: “it is a neurotransmitter that mediates pleasure and reward, linked to the functioning of the subcortical nuclei which underlie many of the repetitive behaviors. When I hear a repetitive acoustic or motor sequence these are set in motion mechanisms that respond to some need of our mind. However, it should be kept in mind – concludes Cappa – that in the phenomenon of the musical catchphrase, there are not only biological but also cultural factors at play “.
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