This website is devoted to a symposium to be delivered at the ICMPC12 (International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition 12) in July of 2012.
The symposium is all about Involuntary Musical Imagery (INMI) or ‘Earworms’. These terms describe the experience whereby a tune comes into the mind and repeats without conscious control. The phenomenon has also dubbed “brain worms,” “sticky music” (Sacks, 2007), “cognitive itch” (Kellaris, 2008) and “stuck song syndrome” (Levitin, 2006)
The aim of the symposium is to explore the latest research into why earworms happen and to explore what that in turn may tell us about the nature of the musical mind.
We hope to see you in Greece! But if you can’t make it then be assured that this website will be updated with as many notes, presentations and maybe even films, as possible. Until then please feel free to browse the site for information about earworms including publications, websites, podcasts and live data collection.
Thank you for your interest,
Vicky, Lassi, Andrea, Daniel, Freya, and Jan.