Poster No:
616
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Svetlana Shinkareva1, Xuan Yang1, Sewon Oh1, Jacob Stanley1, Doug Wedell1
Institutions:
1University of South Carolina, COLUMBIA, SC
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Xuan Yang
University of South Carolina
COLUMBIA, SC
Sewon Oh
University of South Carolina
COLUMBIA, SC
Introduction:
Misophonia is a disorder characterized by intense and often debilitating emotional reactions to specific, typically benign sounds (e.g., chewing or breathing), known as triggers. These reactions can significantly disrupt daily life. Recent estimates suggest that approximately 1 in 22 adults, or 4.6% of the U.S. adult population, are affected by misophonia (Dixon et al., 2024). Despite its widespread prevalence, the underlying mechanisms of the disorder remain poorly understood. While misophonia is primarily triggered by auditory stimuli, auditory and visual systems interact. In this study, we examined brain activation patterns associated with auditory triggers, along with visual and mental imagery correlates of those triggers in participants with misophonia.
Methods:
Thirty-one participants with misophonia and 21 age-, sex-, and handedness-matched controls participated in this study. Participants with misophonia reported experiencing strong negative emotional reactions to auditory triggers and were enrolled based on the Duke-Vanderbilt Misophonia Screening Questionnaire (DVMSQ, Williams et al., 2022). All participants completed Selective Sound Sensitivity Syndrome Scale (S-Five) measure (Vitoratou et al., 2023).
A 3 (modality: auditory, visual, and auditory mental imagery) × 3 (stimulus type: trigger, aversive, and nonaversive) factorial design was used in an fMRI experiment. Each condition consisted of 12 blocks, with each block presenting three 5-second stimuli for the auditory and visual modalities, and two 7.5-second stimuli for the auditory mental imagery condition. Misophonia participants rated each block on how distressing it was. Data for the three modalities were collected in separate scanning sessions, with the order counterbalanced across participants. Individualized trigger stimuli were created for each participant with misophonia. The same stimuli were presented to the matched control counterparts in the same order.
The data were preprocessed using SPM12. Brain responses to trigger stimuli were compared with those to aversive stimuli. We assessed (1) group-level activation in participants with misophonia, applying FWE correction for multiple comparisons, and (2) the group difference between participants with misophonia and matched control participants, in a priori defined regions of interest (ROIs), including the bilateral amygdala, anterior insula, and anterior cingulate. To investigate whether activation differences between trigger and aversive stimuli were associated with misophonia severity, we calculated Pearson correlation coefficients between ROI activation and misophonia severity scores.
Results:
Participants with misophonia rated auditory triggers, visual correlates of auditory triggers, and auditory mental imagery of triggers as significantly more distressing than the aversive stimuli of the corresponding modality. For the whole brain analysis in participants with misophonia, we observed significantly heightened activation in response to trigger compared to aversive stimuli in the bilateral anterior insula, anterior and posterior cingulate, and precuneus. Additionally, activation in the left anterior insula was significantly greater for auditory triggers, visual correlates of auditory triggers, and auditory mental imagery of triggers relative to the aversive stimuli of the corresponding modality. For the ROI analyses, we observed group differences in bilateral anterior insula, and anterior cingulate. Moreover, the heightened activation to trigger compared to aversive stimuli in participants with misophonia was significantly correlated to different aspects of misophonia severity as measured by DVMSQ and S-Five.
Conclusions:
Visual components associated with auditory triggers, as well as thinking about auditory triggers generated behavioral and neural responses similar to auditory triggers. These findings can have important implications for future misophonia research and treatment.
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Emotional Perception 1
Higher Cognitive Functions:
Imagery 2
Keywords:
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Hearing
Perception
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
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Please indicate below if your study was a "resting state" or "task-activation” study.
Task-activation
Healthy subjects only or patients (note that patient studies may also involve healthy subjects):
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Was this research conducted in the United States?
Yes
Are you Internal Review Board (IRB) certified?
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Were any human subjects research approved by the relevant Institutional Review Board or ethics panel?
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Please indicate which methods were used in your research:
Functional MRI
Behavior
Neuropsychological testing
For human MRI, what field strength scanner do you use?
3.0T
Which processing packages did you use for your study?
SPM
Provide references using APA citation style.
Dixon LJ, Schadegg MJ, Clark HL, Sevier CJ, Witcraft SM. (2024). Prevalence, phenomenology, and impact of misophonia in a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults. J Psychopathol Clin Sci., 133(5), 403-412.
Vitoratou S, Hayes C, Uglik-Marucha N, Pearson O, Graham T, Gregory J. (2023). Misophonia in the UK: Prevalence and norms from the S-Five in a UK representative sample. PLoS One,18(3), e0282777.
Williams, Z. J., Cascio, C. J. & Woynaroski, T. G. (2022). Psychometric validation of a brief self-report measure of misophonia symptoms and functional impairment: The Duke-Vanderbilt misophonia screening questionnaire. Front. Psychol. 13, 897901.
No