Scientist have discovered why some find the sound of other people eating unbearable. It's called misophonia, which translates to a hatred of certain sounds that elicits an emotional or physiological response. It can make some people angry, anxious or utterly disgusted.
Researchers at Newcastle University have found through the analysis of brain scans that people with misophonia had stronger instances of activity connecting the area of the brain that processes sound and the premotor cortex, the area of the brain responsible for movement in the mouth and throat.
According to the report published Friday in the Journal of Neuroscience,when researchers played a “trigger sound” for the subjects with misophonia, their brain scans portrayed hyperactivity in their premotor cortex. The volunteer subjects who didn’t have misophonia didn’t display those levels of hyperactivity in their scans.
“What we are suggesting is that in misophonia the trigger sound activates the motor area even though the person is only listening to the sound,” Sukhbinder Kumar, a neuroscientist at Newcastle University,told The Guardian.“It makes them feel like the sounds are intruding into them.”
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