Image by Christophe Gilbert

Earworms can be altogether frustrating. Those songs (or snippets of songs) remain lodged in your head despite your best efforts at purging them (‘Friday’ and ‘Call Me Maybe’ are repeat offenders). However a story in yesterday’s British newspaper The Telegraph offers some hope for the afflicted. The paper sites the research of Dr. Ira Hyman, a music psychologist at Western Washington University.  Following extensive studies, the doctor indicates that the key is to devote one’s mind to something somewhat challenging, and while Sudoku puzzles had some beneficial effect, anagrams proved to yield optimal results. So if “Gangnam Style” has you down, just click here to clean your mind.