New ways into the brain's "music room"

Whether to enliven a commute, relax in the evening or drown out the buzz of a neighbor’s recreational drone, Americans listen to music nearly four hours a day. In international surveys, people consistently rank music as one of life’s supreme sources of pleasure and emotional power. We marry to music, graduate to music, mourn to music. Every culture ever studied has been found to make music, and among the oldest artistic objects known are slender flutes carved from mammoth bone some 43,000 years ago — 24,000 years before the cave paintings of Lascaux. Read on >

The Express Tribune, Pakistan: Stuck on repeat

There might be thousands of new tracks circulating on the airwaves but there is still something uncanny about Ali Haider’s Puraani Jeans that these tunes simply cannot live up to.

Every time the song comes on, a rush of nostalgia hits us hard and makes us press the repeat button. The same is true for evergreen movies like Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham and shows like Friends that have struck a chord in our hearts. We know the songs and scripts by heart but can still shamelessly binge-watch these all-time greats whenever we get the chance. But have you ever wondered why we never get sick of them? How does one explain this desire to watch or listen to things on repeat? Read more >

TED Ed: Earworms

Have you ever been waiting in line at the grocery store, innocently perusing the magazine rack, when a song pops into your head? Not the whole song, but a fragment of it that plays and replays until you find yourself unloading the vegetables in time to the beat? Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis explores earworms — a cognitive phenomenon that plagues over 90% of people at least once a week.

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