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Michael: If you heard someone eating a sandwich Would it make your skin crawl with disgust? What about someone typing loudly at a computer? Would all that tapping start to really get on your nerves? For some people these kinds of noises are more than just annoying They can cause a strong emotional or physical response, like anxiety or intense rage.

These people suffer from a condition called misophonia Which means hatred of sound. It is also sometimes called selective sound sensitivity syndrome. Because misophonia was discovered pretty recently, it isn't officially classified as a disorder, with standard symptoms that a doctor can use to diagnose a patient.

But there is lots of anecdotal evidence and online support groups Which makes some researchers want to investigate the condition. The studies so far have been pretty small. But researchers are beginning to see patterns between patients.

The trigger sounds that cause the emotional responses vary from person to person But many of them seem to be repetitive noises In 2013, a study from the university of Amsterdam, involving just 42 misophonia-sufferers found that many trigger sounds are body-related. Things like chewing, breathing, sneezing and swallowing. Other people report their anxiety is triggered by environmental sounds such as a clicking pen, a ticking clock or even an idling car.

This could mean that some of the soft repetitive noises that produce the positive feelings of ASMR (Which we talked about in another video) Might be causing a strong negative response to people with misophonia To try to explain what is going on neurologically...

In 2004 a couple of scientists suggested that people, who suffer from misophonia may have too much communication in certain regions of their brains. Specifically, they might experience hyper connectivity between the auditory system (which processes sound)and the limbic system (which handles emotions) This could help explain the extra sensitivity to certain noises.

Some scientists have observed links between misophonia and other conditions. Such as: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which involves intense fear in response to stimulus. Other researchers think it's a conditioned response. Basically, something scary or angering or disgusting might have happened at the same time as a certain sound. This could make a person associate that sound with similar negative feelings in the future.

Whatever the neuro-biology may be Misophonia appears to be a real condition with real negative effects on people And there is a lot of research that still needs to be done Hopefully with many more participants So if listening to a room of people chew during a dinner party gives you anxiety, just know you are not alone.

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