Misophonia: Supersensitive Brain Connection Causes Hatred of Noises

A supersensitized brain connection has been identified in people who suffer from misophonia, an extreme reaction to “trigger” sounds.

For the first time, researchers led by Newcastle University, have discovered increased connectivity in the brain between the auditory cortex and the motor control areas related to the face, mouth, and throat. Publishing today, in the Journal of Neuroscience, lead author Dr. Sukhbinder Kumar, Newcastle University Research Fellow in the Biosciences Institute said: “Our findings indicate that for people with misophonia there is abnormal communication between the auditory and motor brain regions — you could describe it as a ‘supersensitized connection’. “This is the first time such a connection in the brain has been identified for the condition.” Misophonia, which means literally ‘hatred of sound’, is a condition in which sufferers experience intense and involuntary reactions to certain sounds made by other people, referred to as ‘trigger’ sounds. Trigger sounds are often the sound of someone chewing, breathing or speaking and for sufferers, usually related to mouth, throat, or facial activity. Their reaction is often extreme, and tends to consist of a combination of anger, disgust, fight-or-flight response, sometimes an urge to hurt the person making the sound or to leave the situation. The condition is common affecting anywhere between 6% to 20% of people. Those with the more severe forms can find themselves unable to tolerate family, work, public or social situations. Previously, misophonia had been considered a disorder of sound processing. This new research suggests that alongside this there is an abnormal type of communication between the brain’s hearing center, the auditory cortex, and the areas of the ventral pre-motor cortex that are responsible for movement of the face, mouth, and throat. In response to trigger or neutral sound, scans on people with misophonia showed that the brain’s auditory cortex (hearing center) responded similarly to people without the condition, however, people with misophonia showed increased communication between the auditory cortex and the motor control areas related to the face, mouth, and throat. These motor control regions were strongly activated by trigger sounds in people with misophonia in response only to their trigger sounds, but not to other sound types or in people without the condition. Read more...

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