By Chris Cosci

It happens when you least expect it. You're going about your day, minding your own business. Suddenly a song pops into your head. Maybe you heard it on the radio in the morning. Maybe something you just read or heard reminded you of one of the lyrics. Whatever the case, this song just seemed to come out of the blue and take residence inside your head.

At first, you seem amused. Then the song repeats itself. Then again. All of a sudden, the song is playing on a continuous loop, over and over again. You try desperately to think about something else -- anything else. It doesn't work. Silently, you wait for the song to just go away before you slowly go insane.

If this has happened to you, don't worry; you're not alone. It's a fairly common experience that was the focus of a study by a University of Cincinnati marketing professor, James Kellaris. Kellaris refers to these songs as earworms. This allows sufferers to assign a name to the problem they're experiencing. Of course, for some people, this may conjure up disturbing images of actual worms wriggling around in their ears. To those people, I sincerely apologize. And to those people who had no such thoughts and now can't get that mental image out of their head because I said something about it... again, I apologize.

Roughly 98% of the people involved in Kellaris' study admitted to being bothered, at one time or another, by a tune that wouldn't leave their head. Kellaris found that earworms tend to affect women more than men, and musicians more than non-musicians. And although those with compulsive tendencies were shown to be more likely to be afflicted by earworms, they are certainly not an indicator of serious mental disorders.

There's no one definitive type of song that can become an earworm. The study cites songs ranging from pop songs to commercial jingles. Some of the most frequently cited songs in the study include (*WARNING -- the next few words are likely to create earworms in susceptible readers; if you are worried about this, please skip to the next paragraph -- I accept no responsibility for what may result) Queen's "We Will Rock You" and, of course, "It's a Small World." I'm sure when Disney came up with "a world of laughter and a world of tears," he never envisioned a world of torture to millions of people who can't get that accursed song out of their head.

While the study provides an explanation for the phenomena, it does leave a lot of questions unanswered. For one thing, it fails to provide any definite reason why these earworms occur, although Kellaris does say that repetition can play a major factor. I'm sure this comes as no surprise to any parent whose child has just finished watching the same Wiggles episode for the ten-thousandth time.

Also, there's no definite solution to the problem. Some people will try to think of another song. Of course, that just leads to the creation of a new earworm, so that's not really an ideal solution. Others will try the diabolic technique of singing the song out loud in an attempt to pass along the agony. Hey -- why suffer alone?

Still, one of the most pressing questions is: why do these earworms always seem to be songs we can't stand? Earworms might be a little more tolerable if they involved songs we actually like. However, it's their tendency to be irritating, insipid songs that makes earworms so infuriating. You know that song you hear on the radio that makes your hand fly to the radio dial and change the station instantaneously? That's the one you'll hear floating through your head for the next twelve hours. And there's nothing you can do about it.

So if this survey tells us anything... actually, it really doesn't. There's no definite cause, no definite solution, and a huge likelihood that the people who read the study will just start suffering from earworms of their own. Who knows? Maybe that was Kellaris' plan all along. In that case: kudos Mr. Kellaris. And may your dreams be filled with singing dolls from around the world.