This Study Perfectly Explains Why The Rage You Feel From Noisy Eating Is Normal

Does the sound of your coworker crunching his way through lunch make you want to smack him? You are not alone. You may have misophonia.  Misophonia is an actual brain disorder that could explain that intense rage you feel as your bestie loudly gobbles a handful of popcorn at the movies.

Misophonia, named as a disorder in 2001, begins in the brain.  It makes the people who suffer from it become highly irritated at eating, loud breathing or other mundane, repetitious noises. Over the years there have been some in the scientific community who remain skeptical about it being a genuine disorder, but new research out of Newcastle University in the U.K. has traced misophonia to the frontal lobe of the brain.

A report in Current Biology, says that scientists found that scans of misophobia sufferers showed measurable changes in brain activity when a sound, such as chewing, was heard. The brain scans showed that people with the disorder don’t have the correct mechanism in place for emotional control when they hear some innocuous like loud breathing. A mundane sound like that can actually trigger a physiological response accompanied by raised heart rate and sweating.

“For many people with misophonia, this will come as welcome news as for the first time we have demonstrated a difference in brain structure and function in sufferers,” explains Dr. Sukhbinder Kumar, from the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University and the Wellcome Trust Centre for NeuroImaging at University College London.

In the study, the researchers used MRI readings to measure the brain activity of people with and without heightened responses to sounds.  The sounds ranged from neutral sounds like rain, a busy café, and water boiling to more unpleasant sounds like a baby crying or someone screaming. They also studied sounds known to trigger people with misophonia, things like breathing or eating. Those with misophonia interpreted the last category of sound differently than those without, and the scans proved it.

“I hope this will reassure sufferers,” says Tim Griffiths a Professor of Cognitive Neurology at Newcastle University. “I was part of the skeptical community myself until we saw patients in the clinic and understood how strikingly similar the features are.”

“This study demonstrates the critical brain changes as further evidence to convince a skeptical medical community that this is a genuine disorder,” added Dr. Sukhbinder Kumar.

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