Research shows annoying sounds might not be in your ears, but in your brain

The sound of someone sniffling can be irritating, but that has almost nothing to do with the sound itself, new Carnegie Mellon University research shows.

“It’s not the sound, it’s how I feel about the person sitting next to me, and how it’s rude to sniffle,” said Laurie Heller, a psychology professor at CMU.

Minor annoyance with some sounds is a fairly common reaction, says Heller, but for people with a condition known as misophonia, some noises can trigger emotional and even physical discomfort.

Heller and a team of researchers at CMU are trying to find out why some people are more susceptible to adverse reactions to sounds and what can be done the lessen the effects.

Sometimes, reframing the situation in one’s mind can make a noise seem less troublesome.

Take the sniffling, for example. Thinking instead of the person pulling tissues from a box could make the sound less unpleasant to someone, Heller said.

“That reappraisal of the situation can be helpful in a therapeutic context,” Heller said.

That’s part of the new research by Heller and a team of others at CMU with insight into misophonia, a condition where everyday sounds trigger intense emotional and physical discomfort that disrupt people’s daily lives.

“It’s not going to cure misophonia, but it’s another tool to manage day-to-day sounds,” Heller said.

People with misophonia find certain, everyday sounds — like someone chewing, keyboard clacking or crinkling plastic — to be unbearable, Heller said. It’s not just being annoyed by those sounds. It triggers real emotional or physical discomfort.

“There are a lot of daily sounds that play a role in misophonia,” she said. “Everyone has their own certain set of trigger sounds.”

In fact, people’s bodies reveal the discomfort, Heller’s research found. Through tracking pupil size, scientists observed measurable physical responses to triggering sounds.

“People with misophonia, their bodies are reacting differently to these sounds. The psychological reaction is stronger.”

Heller estimates about 5% of the young adult population in the United States experience misophonia. However, misophonia is not recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Even the name, misophonia, isn’t really official until the disorder gains recognition by the wider community of psychologists.

“It’s a fairly prevalent disorder, but it just hasn’t been named,” Heller said. “We’re in an era where awareness of misophonia is increasing, people are doing research on the diagnosis of it and how to treat it. In a few years, we’ll be in a better place.”

Marsha Johnson, a Portland, Ore.-based audiologist and one of the first people who identified misophonia at her clinic in 1997, said Heller’s research is an “interesting and promising inside into the field.”

“The Misophonia Association believes that there will be a middle ground diagnostic definition in the future,” Johnson said. “That includes both psychological research as well as neurophysiological research.

“It is now well established that misophonia affects a number of sensory systems in human beings, including sound and sight as well as touch and (smell). … (It) can also be produced through simple thinking about triggers and remembering them.”

Visual reframing

Heller found that visual reframing helped people with misophonia.

She and her team made videos that paired unpleasant sounds with an unrelated visual — for example, a sound of someone chewing with a visual of someone else stirring a pot of soup. Participants rated how disgusting they found the sounds.

Results showed that many participants rated the same sounds as significantly less unpleasant when they were visually reframed.

She gave an example of the sound of someone vomiting.

“There’s nothing about the acoustics that makes it (uncomfortable),” she said. “It’s what you know is making the sound, that makes it unpleasant.”

That could lead to future therapies for clinicians to retrain people’s brains to respond differently to triggering sounds, Heller said.

She hopes her findings can be useful for future research to help develop treatment for misophonia.

“We have a deep, primitive link to sounds and emotions,” Heller said. “Misophonia is hijacking that link.”