Learn English – What word describes when an image or thought gets stuck in your head

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Is there an English word that describes when you do the something all day and then it gets stuck in your head.

Examples of what I'm describing:

  • You spend 12 hours straight solving crossword puzzles and afterwords,
    you look at a restaurant menu and find your self counting the letters
    of the words and thinking of synonyms
  • You spend all day on a rocky boat and when you get back to land, you
    still feel rocking – even hours later.
  • You spend all day at a theme park, wading through people, and later
    in bed, when you close your eyes, you see people everywhere even if
    you try to stop the thought.

The closest word I've found is "earworm", but this is only for music replaying in your head, not images, thought processes, or tasks.

Best Answer

The Tetris Effect describes the condition, although not necessarily the object of fixation. From Wikipedia:

The Tetris effect (also known as Tetris Syndrome) occurs when people devote so much time and attention to an activity that it begins to pattern their thoughts, mental images, and dreams. It takes its name from the video game Tetris.

and:

It has also been known to occur with non-video games, such as the illusion of curved lines after doing a jigsaw puzzle...

and:

On a perceptual level, sea legs are a kind of Tetris effect.

If this were a song, it would be called an Earworm. Also from Wikipedia:

An earworm, sometimes known as a brainworm, sticky music, or stuck song syndrome, is a catchy piece of music that continually repeats through a person's mind after it is no longer playing.

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