Earworm

An earworm, also called a brainworm, sticky music or stuck song syndrome, is a catchy or memorable piece of music or saying that keeps occupying a person's mind after it is no longer being played or spoken about. It is a common type of involuntary cognition. Involuntary musical imagery, or INMI, is most often experienced as an earworm, although the label is wider and also covers musical hallucinations, which are not the same thing. The word is a calque of the German Ohrwurm, and its earliest known English use is in Desmond Bagley's 1978 novel Flyaway. Researchers who have written about the phenomenon include Theodor Reik, Oliver Sacks, Daniel Levitin, James Kellaris, Philip Beaman, Vicky Williamson and Diana Deutsch. It is distinct from palinacousis, a rare condition caused by damage to the temporal lobe that produces auditory hallucinations.