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The brain has the demand, to complete the patterns you perceive. If you see some tiger ears behind a stone, your brain completes this known pattern and you are aware of a tiger, sitting behind a stone. In evolution, this demand was useful, the people running away from the stone, even if theier pattern-recognition was wrong and there was no tiger behind a stone. Those, who wanted to look behind it, stumbled inside the tigers mouth.
Your brain wants to complete the song you heared and tries to remember the rest of the song, even if it only has memorized the awful refrain you hate, because of this phenomenon. In German, there is a pretty interesting word for this, it’s called an “Ohrwurm” = ear worm.
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