Abstract
Misophonia is an understudied condition that is commonly viewed as an extreme sensitivity to specific soft sounds and visual stimuli which elicit strong negative emotions and physiological arousal. Recent research using self-report measures indicates that misophonia includes an elicited physical respondent (e.g. skeletal muscle flinch). Using electromyography (EMG) and direct observation, an immediate physical response to trigger stimuli was verified in three misophonic participants. Consistent movement of the body was observed in each subject when the subject reported having a moderate to strong response, though the location was unique for each subject. The response appeared to be immediate with the onset of a brief auditory stimulus and occurred at the start and throughout longer visual trigger stimuli. Additionally, an EMG measured response was consistent in one participant, and occurred in another participant when there was a strong self-reported response. Response latency for the EMG measured response was several hundred milliseconds, indicating the responses were elicited by the misophonic trigger stimulus and not general physiological arousal. This provides empirical evidence of an elicited physical response to misophonic stimuli in these individuals with misophonia. This supports conceptualization of misophonia as a condition which includes a respondent behavior (e.g. muscle flinch) elicited by the misophonic trigger stimulus. This highlights the need for additional research on the elicited physical response to misophonic stimuli and classical conditioning as a mechanism for the development of such a response.
Highlights
Misophonia is an understudied and sparsely known condition characterized by extreme sensitivity to specific soft sounds and/or visual images that elicit strong emotion and physiologic arousal (Dozier, 2015b; Dozier, Lopez, & Pearson, 2017; Edelstein, Brang, Rouw, & Ramachandran, 2013; Jastreboff & Jastreboff, 2002; Kumar et al, 2017; Schröder, Vulink, & Denys, 2013)
The misophonia response is generally considered to consist of extreme emotions elicited by the misophonic trigger stimuli and autonomic arousal as a stress response to the extreme emotions (Edelstein et al, 2013; Jastreboff & Jastreboff, 2014; Kumar et al, 2017; Schröder et al, 2013; Wu, Lewin, Murphy, & Storch, 2014)
An alternate view of misophonia proposes that misophonia includes an initial physical reflex as shown in Figure 1(b) which has been presented in case studies and conference reports (Dozier, 2013, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2017; Pearson 2015) and one experimental study (Dozier & Morrison, 2017)
Summary
The misophonia response is generally considered to consist of extreme emotions elicited by the misophonic trigger stimuli and autonomic arousal as a stress response to the extreme emotions (Edelstein et al, 2013; Jastreboff & Jastreboff, 2014; Kumar et al, 2017; Schröder et al, 2013; Wu, Lewin, Murphy, & Storch, 2014). An alternate view of misophonia proposes that misophonia includes an initial physical reflex (e.g. muscle flinch) as shown in Figure 1(b) which has been presented in case studies and conference reports (Dozier, 2013, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2017; Pearson 2015) and one experimental study (Dozier & Morrison, 2017)
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