What sound sources trigger misophonia? Not just chewing and breathing
Misophonia is a condition that affects approximately one out of five individuals, yet is relatively understudied. Misophonia involves an aversion to particular environmental sounds; previous work focuses primarily on aversions to human mouth and nose sounds (e.g., chewing, sniffling), but there exists considerable individual variability in sounds reported as bothersome, warranting an objective and data-driven investigation. What types of sounds trigger aversive reactions in misophonia, and can we identify individuals as having misophonia based on their aversiveness ratings to certain sounds? Experiment 1 asked whether human-produced oral/nasal sounds were more aversive than human-produced non-oral/nasal sounds and nonhuman/nature sounds. Experiment 2 replicated these findings using a large public sound bank and different participants, and additionally asked whether machine-learning algorithms could predict the presence and severity of misophonia. Results showed that sounds from all three source categories – not just oral/nasal sounds – were rated as significantly more aversive to individuals with misophonia compared to controls; further, modeling all source categories classified misophonia with 89% accuracy and predicted severity of misophonia with a correlation of 0.75. This work suggests that misophonia should be conceptualized as more than an aversion to human oral/nasal sounds, which has implications for future diagnostics and experimental consistency moving forward.