Excessive “Mirroring” Could Explain Why People With Misophonia React Strongly To Sounds Of Chewing Or Drinking

By Emma Young No one likes the sound of someone else chewing or drinking. But for some people, it’s enough to cause overwhelming feelings of anger or disgust — and in some cases, send them into a violent rage. People with “misophonia” (literally a hatred of sounds) over-react to some common everyday “trigger sounds” — typically, sounds made by another person. Though the phenomenon has been well documented, exactly what causes it hasn’t been clear. Now a new paper in the Journal of Neuroscience provides a compelling explanation: that misophonia isn’t related to hearing so much as to an “over-mirroring” of someone else’s physical actions. The team, led by Sukhbinder Kumar at Newcastle University, thinks that this excessive mirroring causes anger in some sufferers, and anxiety and distress in others. So-called “mirror neurons” in the premotor cortex were first discovered in monkeys. Groups of these neurons fire when a monkey either performs a specific action, like opening a peanut shell, or watches another monkey doing the same action. This system is thought to aid learning from others, and also the coordination of actions, so that a troop can hunt together effectively, for example. In people, there is evidence for mirror systems for movement and also emotion. (I should note, though, that some researchers dispute the strength of this evidence.) Misophonia has been thought of as a disorder of sound emot...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Brain Perception Source Type: blogs