Earworms commonly affect people while they're awake, but the study found that they also can happen while trying to sleep. 'Everyone knows that music listening feels good. Surprisingly, the study found that some instrumental music is more likely to lead to earworms and disrupt sleep quality than lyrical music. 'What was really surprising was that instrumental music led to worse sleep quality – instrumental music leads to about twice as many earworms,' Professor Scullin said. Participants who had a sleep earworm showed more slow oscillations during sleep, a marker of memory reactivation – where a memory is brought from an inactive to an active state.

Source: Daily Mail June 11, 2021 11:22 UTC