Although it seems maddeningly impossible, new research suggests we really can get rid of that nagging tune that endlessly plays over and over again in our head.  

For those of you who had Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” in your head for most of 2012, or haven’t been able to stop your brain from playing “Master of the House” since seeing “Les Miserables” over the holidays, you’ll want to take note.

The trick is this: We can banish earworms from our brains by engaging in an absorbing task – something that is not too easy, but not too difficult, either.

Known as earworms, those songs that just won’t go away are a common type of intrusive thought, according to Ira Hyman, professor of psychology at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash. Hyman and his research team conducted a series of experiments focused on learning more about why the earworm phenomenon and other intrusive thoughts are so persistent as well as what types of cognitive activities may help interrupt them.  Their research is published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology. 

“We first did a general survey and asked people about their most recent experience with an intrusive song and found that the vast majority actually liked the songs that were in their heads,” Hyman told NBCNews.com.  The most repetitive songs were those that were well liked or popular at the time of the survey. 

The initial survey included about 300 participants of various age groups.  The other four studies included several hundred undergraduate college students. 

Hyman isn’t sure yet exactly what cognitive mechanism causes certain songs to stick, but he also found that once an earworm finds a home in the brain, it just seems to stay there. 

“After a while, it feels like it’s gone from conscious awareness, but suddenly, it’s back in there again.  It’s almost waiting in the wings of consciousness for the stage in your mind to empty,” Hyman explained. 

Earworms are more likely to wriggle in when people are bored or engaged in activities that are either somewhat mindless or very complicated.

“If you’re doing something that’s really automatic, such as walking or riding a bike, and there’s a lot of room for a song to play in your head, it will probably come back,” he said.

At the other extreme, performing a complex task that may be too difficult to complete may also leave more room for the earworm to wiggle its way in.

Study subjects attempted puzzles of varying complexity, and those who worked on more difficult ones reported experiencing the earworm phenomenon more frequently. 

“You want to find the point at which you’re pretty engaged in a task so there’s not much room or consciousness for music to be playing in your head,” Hyman suggested.  

The earworm-busting activity would be different for different people, Hyman explains. "For some people, it may be to read a book, or play a video game, or getting engaged in sports," he says. "It has to be something that fully engages the consciousness for that person."

But here's the bad news: “There’s a good chance it will disappear, but it may come back later,” he says. And if it does, Hyman has another suggestion.

“Listen to something else,” he said.

Related:

• Why you can't get 'Call Me Maybe' out of your head
• 4 reasons a song gets stuck in your head

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Reuters file photo

Singer Carly Rae Jepsen just met you. And this is crazy. But here she is singing at the MuchMusic Video Awards in Toronto on Sunday, so call her, maybe?

It seems impossible to hide from Carly Rae Jepsen's “Call Me Maybe.” Someone auto-tuned videos of President Obama so he performs it; The Roots and Jimmy Fallon played it with toy musical instruments; the Harvard baseball team, the Southern Methodist University women’s rowing team, and the Miami Dolphin cheerleaders all danced to the ditty; and the bubble gum pop song has taken over all the airwaves.

And maybe your brainwaves -- does it seem like “Call Me Maybe” is on repeat in your head? You’re not alone; you have an earworm. Earworms, or involuntary imagery of music, burrow their way into the subconscious, making a home in the brain. And "Call Me Maybe" is arguably the earwormiest song in recent memory. 

“Earworms is a colloquial name for a phenomena in music psychology—an experience when you get a song or a piece of song such as chorus [stuck in your head] without a willing attempt to experience a musical memory,” says Lassi A. Liikkanen, who published two papers about earworms recently in the journals Psychology of Music and Musicae Scientiae.   

People frequently experience earworms after hearing a new songs and recognizing a few snippets of lyrics and melody.  

“Involuntary imagery of music is based on our skill to remember music, but for some reason feels out of control. But is perfectly normal,” explains, Liikkanen, a researcher at Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT in Finland.

Songs such as “Call Me Maybe” or fun's “We Are Young” seem to pop into our brains against our will. Seeing an album cover or recalling a memory associated with a song can induce an earworm. Liikkanen, who surveyed more than 12,000 Finish Internet users about earworms, found that nearly 90 percent of people experience involuntary imagery of music.

“Some times these involuntary music experiences are tied to a life experience and it is congruent with mood,” he says. “Even if you haven’t heard a song for weeks, months, decades [hearing the song sparks] a key memory.”

He discovered that women catch earworms more than men and younger generations have the bug more frequently than older folks. While there is little evidence about why these differences occur, Liikkanen has a few theories.

Women might be more attuned to their mental lives, possibly connecting songs with meaningful moments more frequently. When it comes to earworms and older people, it seems that older folks listen to music less and might not have as great of memory retention as they once had.

In general, people who play or write music hear earworms more than those simple music listeners.

“A lot of the great composers claim they were hearing the music in their heads … it happens with the not so [great] composers,” Liikkanen says. While the more musical education one has the more involuntary imagery of music occurs at some point it evens out—people with the highest levels of music education reported fewer recurrent earworms.

Those with a form of OCD might hear earworms an excessive amount and people suffering auditory hallucinations sometimes also hear snippets of songs repeatedly. In these cases, Liikkanen says people should consult a psychiatrist for treatment.

“People consider [earworms] entertaining and fun occasions when they emerge,” he says. “Music is wonderfully complicated in human psychology.”  

Dying to extract "Call Me Maybe" from your brain? It's not so simple. Liikkanen suggests avoiding all music and cues connected with the song. Cues can be as seemingly insignificant as hearing the title of the song or the artist's name -- so you'll need a moratorium on anything beginning with the words "call me." Good luck with that. 

You can enable the Earworm Clinic application on Facebook to learn more about your earworms and provide information for Liikkanen. 

Related:

• Can't carry a tune to save your life? You may be amusic
• Shriek, sob, swoon: What causes Bieber fever?

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

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Redfoo of LMFAO knows exactly what it takes to get a song permanently stuck in your head. Now, researchers are getting a clue, too.

When I take my early morning spinning classes, my weary brain is in a vulnerable state. Maybe that's one reason why the chorus of a particular tune, like LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem" or Katy Perry's "Firework," played during the workout gets trapped inside my head for the rest of the day -- and night -- and the next day. 

Known as earworms, these random snippets of songs or melodies pop into our minds repeating themselves again and again like a broken record. For me, another one was that silly jingle from the McDonald's filet-of-fish commercial, which undoubtedly would delight advertisers but I found both amusing and mildly annoying.

So it helps to know that earworms are an incredibly common experience: Studies suggest that 90 percent of people get them at least once a week. Over the last decade, researchers have spent time collecting data to learn who gets earworms, how often they occur, how long they last and which songs won't budge from our brains.

Now, a new British study in the journal Psychology of Music has tried to understand their origins. They looked at how earworms, which psychologists call involuntary musical imagery, get started in the first place.

Researchers collected data from 604 people who completed an online survey. After analyzing the responses, they identified four main triggers for earworms. The most common one was music exposure, either recently hearing a tune or repeatedly hearing it. A second reason was memory triggers, meaning that seeing a particular person or word, hearing a specific beat, or being in a certain situation reminds you of a song.

The third reason for earworms your emotional frame of mind, or "affective states."  Feeling stressed, surprised or happy when you hear a song may make it stick in your head. And a fourth cause was "low attention states."  A wandering mind, whether from daydreaming or dreams at night, can set off this involuntary musical imagery. 

"I was initially surprised by the sheer number of idiosyncrasies within the earworm surveys -- the number of different tunes people heard and the number of unique circumstances where earworms popped up," says study author, Victoria Williamson, a music psychologist at Goldsmiths, University of London.

But it makes sense, she says, since "these spontaneous mental tunes appear to be a typical everyday consequence of the way that our brains process music."

And these "sticky songs" can be a tune you hear often or a brand new one. "Earworms are likely to be as individual as we are in both our musical tastes and music listening habits," explains Williamson.

Asked what to do when you get one, Williamson says she'll be trying to find out how people control them in her next research project." But in the meantime, she offers up this advice: "I find that occupying my mind with a task helps -- reading a book, doing a puzzle or talking to a friend."

What about you? Tell us what song has stuck in your head recently and what may have triggered it. 

Related:

• Song stuck in your head? You've got an earworm
• 'Come on, Irene'? Why we mishear song lyrics
• Blinded by the lyric? Study reveals why we get the words wrong

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.