Anger and anxiety in response to everyday sounds of eating, drinking and breathing come from increased activity in parts of the brain that process and regulate emotions, scientists have found in a new research published in Current Biology.
People with this condition, called misophonia, are often dismissed as just overly sensitive, says Jennifer Jo Brout, a clinical psychologist not involved with the study. “This really confirms that it’s neurologically based,” says Brout, founder of the Sensory Processing and Emotion Regulation Program at Duke University Medical Center.
Researchers played sounds to 20 people with misophonia and 22 people without. Some sounds were neutral, such as rain falling. Others, like a wailing baby, were annoying to both groups of people but didn’t cause a misophonic response. A third set were sounds known to cause distress in people with misophonia — chewing and breathing noises.
MRI brain scans showed that both groups of people reacted similarly to the neutral and annoying sounds. But misophonics responded far more dramatically to the chewing and breathing, the Science News reported.
They showed more activity in their anterior insular cortex, a brain structure involved in emotional processing. Scientists found structural differences, too — more connections from the anterior insular cortex to structures like the amygdala and the hippocampus, which also help with processing emotions.