A condition known as misophonia, which causes people to have intense emotional reactions to certain everyday sounds, has long been misunderstood. While scientists are only beginning to understand the cause of this extreme response, new research suggests that misophonia may be a disorder of social cognition.
The condition is estimated to affect up to 18% of the population, but it wasn’t officially named until 2001. Historically, people thought of misophonia as an auditory processing disorder, but neuroscientist Joel I. Berger and his colleagues argue that it’s actually shaped by the social context in which those sounds occur.
Berger believes that human responses to sound are influenced by our perception of its source. For example, when healthy study participants were exposed to unpleasant sounds, they found them less aversive if they were told they were listening to music. But for people with misophonia, sounds tend to be most troubling when generated by other humans.
Studies have shown that the brains of people with misophonia are wired differently than those without the condition. The auditory cortex is activated in response to trigger sounds, but it’s also involved in perception of motion, language, faces, and social relationships. This suggests that people with misophonia may have heightened awareness of the movements of others, leading to feelings of emotional anguish.
Berger proposes that mimicking the actions underlying the troubling sound could provide relief for people with misophonia. By unconsciously mimicking these movements, they may be able to reassert control over their brains’ representations of those sounds.
This new understanding of misophonia as a disorder of social cognition has implications for treatment. Current therapies often focus on reducing conditioned responses and don’t take social context into account. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has been found effective in some cases, but Berger suggests that future interventions could teach patients to reassess the context in which sounds are heard.
One person with misophonia shared her experience of how her symptoms diminished significantly when she moved out of her childhood home, away from the offending sounds and the person who made them. This anecdote highlights the importance of considering social context in understanding and treating this complex condition.
Source: https://nautil.us/when-other-peoples-chewing-causes-you-pain-1189542