Why do people remember songs?
Why do people remember songs? Edinburgh, March 11 (Online) Scientists have discovered what makes a tune catchy by pinpointing the precise part of the brain where a song’s “hook” gets caught. A team from Dartmouth College at Hanover in New Hampshire discovered that it is the auditory cortex – the area that handles information from the ears – that holds on to musical memories, reported the Scottish daily Scotsman. Researchers played music to volunteers using a technique called functional magnetic resonance imagery and scanned their brains. As the music was played, parts of the tune were cut. Researchers found volunteers mentally filled in the blanks for a familiar song with missing snippets, though the same effect was not seen with unfamiliar tunes. The brain activity, picked up by the scan, was centred in the auditory cortex. David Kraemer, a member of the research team, said: “We played music in the scanner and then we hit a virtual ‘mute’ button. “We found people couldn’t help continu
