Earworm
catchy piece of music that continually repeats through a person's mind after it is no longer playing
An earworm or brainworm, also described as sticky music or stuck song syndrome, is a catchy or memorable piece of music or saying that continuously occupies a person's mind even after it is no longer being played or spoken about. Involuntary Musical Imagery (INMI) is most common after earworms, but INMI as a label is not solely restricted to earworms; musical hallucinations also fall into this category, although they are not the same thing. Earworms are considered to be a common type of involuntary cognition. Some of the phrases often used to describe earworms include "musical imagery repetition" and "involuntary musical imagery".
The word earworm is a calque from the German Ohrwurm. The earliest known English usage is in Desmond Bagley's 1978 novel Flyaway, where the author points out the German origin of his word.
Researchers who have studied and written about the phenomenon include Theodor Reik, Sean Bennett, Oliver Sacks, Daniel Levitin, James Kellaris, Philip Beaman, Vicky Williamson, Diana Deutsch, and, in a more theoretical perspective, Peter Szendy, along with many more. The phenomenon is distinct from palinacousis, a rare medical condition caused by damage to the temporal lobe of the brain that results in auditory hallucinations.
Incidence and causes
Researcher Vicky Williamson at Goldsmiths, University of London, found in an uncontrolled study that earworms correlated with music exposure, but could also be triggered by experiences that trigger the memory of a song (involuntary memory) such as seeing a word that reminds one of the song, hearing a few notes from the song, or feeling an emotion one associates with the song. The list of songs collected in the study showed no particular pattern, other than popularity.
The public source identifies “Earworm” as catchy piece of music that continually repeats through a person's mind after it is no longer playing. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Earworm, catchy and piece.
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This entry incorporates text from “Earworm” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.