A Song on the Brain - IELTS Reading Answers

The Academic passage ‘A song on the brain’ would help you in familiarising yourself with all the question types so that you can build confidence in reading such long passages. With this passage, you get the opportunity to learn how to skim the text to avoid missing any important details, find the answers by scanning the text in less than a minute, and how to stay accurate even under time constraints. This IELTS Reading passage develops your skills at eliminating the incorrect options while keeping track of the differing opinions in the text, and finding the main ideas of the paragraphs with ease. 

Types of Questions in IELTS Reading Passages ‘A Song on the Brain’

Being aware of the question types would help you recognize them and understand the strategies to be used to answer. With this knowledge, you will improve your reading comprehension and become a critical reader, a faster retriever of information, and learn to understand vocabulary through context interpretation. Below are the question types that you will come across in this particular reading passage ‘A Song on the Brain’.

• IELTS Reading Multiple Choice Questions [Q.1 - Q.3]
• IELTS Reading Matching Features [Q.4 - Q.7]
• IELTS Reading Matching Information [Q.8 - Q.13]

How to Answer the IELTS Reading Passage ‘A Song on the Brain’ Under 20 Minutes?

Time Management for IELTS Reading is one of the most important factors that lead to achieving a band score of 8+. This passage would improve your skills at reasoning, cause-effect relationships, and elaborate illustrations which can make you spend more time in finding answers. However, you can incorporate a few strategies so that you can complete answering this one particular passage in no more than 20 minutes. Below are the tips which can help you a step-by-step method and learn to read efficiently and locate answers with accuracy.

Check out the video below to dive into the top 5 tips for speed reading!

IELTS Reading Passage on ‘A Song on the Brain’

A Song on the Brain

Some songs just won't leave you alone. But this may give us clues about how our brain works

A Everyone knows the situation where you can't get a song out of your head. You hear a pop song on the radio - or even just read the song's title and it haunts you for hours, playing over and over in your mind until you're heartily sick of it. The condition now even has a medical name 'song-in-head syndrome’.

B But why does the mind annoy us like this? No one knows for sure, but it's probably because the brain is better at holding onto information than it is at knowing what information is important. Roger Chaffin, a psychologist at the University of Connecticut says, ‘It's a manifestation of an aspect of memory which is normally an asset to us, but in this instance, it can be a nuisance.’

C This eager acquisition of the brain may have helped our ancestors remember important information in the past. Today, students use it to learn new material, and musicians rely on it to memorise complicated pieces. But when this useful function goes awry it can get you stuck on a tune. Unfortunately, superficial, repetitive pop tunes are, by their very nature, more likely to stick than something more inventive.

D The annoying playback probably originates in the auditory cortex. Located at the front of the brain, this region handles both listening and playback of music and other sounds. Neuroscientist Robert Zatorre of McGill University in Montreal proved this some years ago when he asked volunteers to replay the theme from the TV show Dallas in their heads. Brain imaging studies showed that this activated the same region of the auditory cortex as when the people actually heard the song.

E Not every stored musical memory emerges into consciousness, however. The frontal lobe of the brain gets to decide which thoughts become conscious and which ones are simply stored away. But it can become fatigued or depressing, which is when people most commonly suffer from song-in-head syndrome and other intrusive thoughts, says Susan Ball, a clinical psychologist at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. And once the unwanted song surfaces, it's hard to stuff it back down into the subconscious. 'The more you try to suppress a thought, the more you get it," says Ball. ‘We call this the pink elephant phenomenon. Tell the brain not to think about pink elephants, and it's guaranteed to do so,' she says.

F For those not severely afflicted, simply avoiding certain kinds of music can help. 'l know certain pieces that are kind of "sticky" to me, so | will not play them in the early morning for fear that they will run around in my head all day,’ says Steven Brown, who trained as a classical pianist but is now a neuroscientist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He says he always has a song in his head and, even more annoying, his mind never seems to make it all the way through. ‘It tends to involve short fragments between, say, 5 or 15 seconds. They seem to get looped, for hours sometimes,’ he says.

G Brown's experience of repeated musical loops may represent a phenomenon called ‘chunking’, in which people remember musical phrases as a single unit of memory, says Caroline Palmer, a psychologist at Ohio State University in Columbus. Most listeners have little choice about what chunks they remember. Particular chunks may be especially 'sticky' if you hear them often or if they follow certain predictable patterns, such as the chord progression of rock 'n' roll music. Palmer's research shows that the more a piece of music conforms to these patterns, the easier it is to remember. That's why you're more likely to be haunted by the tunes of pop music than by those of a classical composer such as J. S. Bach.

H But this ability can be used for good as well as annoyance. Teachers can tap into memory reinforcement by setting their lessons to music. For example, in one experiment students who heard a history text set as the lyrics to a catchy song remembered the words better than those who simply read them, says Sandra Calvert, a psychologist at Georgetown University in Washington DC.

I This sort of memory enhancement may even explain the origin of music. Before the written word could be used to record history, people memorised it in songs, says Leon James, a psychologist at the University of Hawaii. And music may have had an even more important role. ‘All music has a message.’ he says. ‘This message functions to unite society and to standardise the thought processes of people in society.’

Questions 1-3

1 The writer says that song-in-head syndrome’ may occur because the brain

1. confuses two different types of memory.
2. cannot decide what information it needs to retain.
3. has been damaged by harmful input.
4. cannot hold onto all the information it processes.

2 A tune is more likely to stay in your head if

1. it is simple and unoriginal.
2. you have musical training.
3. it is part of your culture.
4. you have a good memory.

3 Robert Zatorre found that a part of the auditory cortex was activated when volunteers

1. listened to certain types of music.
2. learned to play a tune on an instrument.
3. replayed a piece of music after several years.
4. remembered a tune they had heard previously.

Questions 4-7

4 The memorable nature of some tunes can help other learning processes.

5 Music may not always be stored in the memory in the form of separate notes.

6 People may have started to make music because of their need to remember things.

7 Having a song going round your head may happen to you more often when one part of the brain is tired.

Questions 8-13

8 acclaim that music strengthens social bonds

9 two reasons why some bits of music tend to stick in your mind more than others 

10 an example of how the brain may respond in opposition to your wishes

11 the name of the part of the brain where song-in-head syndrome begins

12 examples of two everyday events that can set off song-in- head syndrome

13 a description of what one person does to prevent song-in- head syndrome

Answers with Explanation on IELTS Passage ‘A Song on the Brain’

Well done! Now, let’s look at the answers with explanations and remember to compare it with yours. As you go through the answers, identify your errors which keep occurring in terms of misunderstanding the meaning of the words and context, or keyword identification in question types. Such knowledge will make you ready to work on the areas of improvement.

By practising with passages such as ‘A Song on the Brain’ would boost your skill in identifying the keywords and analyze different question types more accurately. Remember to always compare your answers with the correct ones and discover the patterns in the errors you make. To get a band 8+ in the  IELTS Academic Reading section, you must go back to difficult parts, practice answering with similar passages, and challenge yourself. This continuous cycle of practice, reviewing answers, and noting down areas of improvement will develop your confidence for the actual test.

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