Obsessive songs: phenomenology and neural substrates

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Who has never experienced a song getting "stuck" in the mind, repeating itself over and over? This phenomenon, called "earworm" or "obsessive songs", has received little scientific attention, perhaps because of its private, benign and unexpected nature. In this proposal we propose that obsessive songs represent an invaluable opportunity to investigate the mind's functioning through the interplay between perception, emotional drive, cognitive function, memory and behavioural mechanisms. The proposal has four objectives. The first objective is to establish the characteristics of obsessive songs and examine if they can be recorded and analyzed. The second objective is to investigate the possibility that obsessive songs can be elicited in the laboratory by exposure to catchy popular tunes (e.g. the Hockey Night in Canada anthem, Jingle Bells, etc.). The third objective will test the hypothesis that obsessive songs activate specific brain areas similar but also distinct from the ones involved in musical imagery and perception. More specifically, we will examine the role of brain structures that are involved in feedback signals that make the difference between imagery and real sounds from the environment, and brain structures that are involved in the inability to perform switching between tasks. The fourth objective is to test the hypothesis that obsessive songs can be modulated by inhibiting specific brain region activity by applying targeted transcranial magnetic stimulation.