If you have a strong reaction to certain sounds, such as other people chewing or drumming their fingers, it could be because of an abnormal connection in your brain. Scientists recently discovered that the auditory cortex (the brain’s hearing center) connects with the orofacial motor cortex (controlling movement of the face, mouth and throat). This makes sense when you consider that most misophonia-triggering sounds are caused by actions involving human faces – like eating or breathing.

What is Misophonia?

Misophonia, also known as selective sound sensitivity syndrome or soft sound sensitivity syndrome, is a condition in which negative emotions such as anger and anxiety are triggered by specific sounds. Common triggers include chewing noises, breathing patterns (snoring), whistling, sniffing and tapping of fingernails on surfaces.

What is new about this study?

This study is the first to show that misophonia sufferers have a higher than normal level of activity in their auditory cortex, and consequently an abnormal connection between this area and the part of the brain that controls facial movements.

“Our findings indicate that for people with misophonia there is abnormal communication between the auditory and motor brain regions,” says neuroscientist Sukhbinder Kumar, from Newcastle University in the UK.

“You could describe it as a ‘super-sensitized connection’. This is the first time such a connection in the brain has been identified for the condition.”

75 people with and without misophonia participated in the study where the team analyzed fMRI brain scans to discover this connection. The data was collected while various noises where being made that are generally upsetting for people such as screaming. Then noises that only trigger people with misophonia were played such as chewing.

“What surprised us was that we also found a similar pattern of communication between the visual and motor regions, which reflects that misophonia can also occur when triggered by something visual,” says Kumar.

“This leads us to believe that this communication activates something called the ‘mirror system’, which helps us process movements made by other individuals by activating our own brain in a similar way – as if we were making that movement ourselves.”

What is the Mirror Neuron System?

Wikipedia defines the Mirror Neuron System as a group of neurons that fire both when an animal acts and when it watches another individual act. It has been hypothesized to serve several roles in cognition, including action understanding, intention understanding, empathy, theory of mind (mental state attribution), learning via observation or imitation; and language processing: hence the name Mirror Neurons.

How Mirror Neurons are playing a role in Misophonia

Researchers suggested that the reason his condition is so unpleasant is because when the mirroring happens it feels like there is an intrusion into the brain. This has lead to one of the common coping mechanisms of misophonia which is where the person who is suffering mimics the physical action that is causing the sound and it tricks the brain into taking back control. For example imitating the chewing of the person eating near you can help relieve the distress caused by misophonia.

Other ways to cope with Misophonia are to find ways to avoid the trigger sounds. The person who has misophonia can cover their ears, leave a room or place that is triggering them, turn up music so they cannot hear what’s causing it and other coping mechanisms.

How Many People Have Misophonia?

Researchers believe that somewhere between 6 and 20% of the population has some type of misophonia. It is estimated that misophonia affects around 40% of people with autism spectrum disorder, but this needs more research to be confirmed.

Unfortunately, misophonic can make social situations quite unbearable for the people suffering from it.

“The study provides new ways to think about the treatment options for misophonia,” says neurologist Tim Griffiths, from Newcastle University.

“Instead of focussing on sound centers in the brain, which many existing therapies do, effective therapies should consider motor areas of the brain as well.”