Cross-Sensory Stimuli Modulate Reactions to Aversive Sounds

Samermit, Patrawat; Saal, Jeremy; Davidenko, Nicolas

doi:10.1163/22134808-20191344

Cited by 11 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…For instance, associative learning has been shown to configure the MNS ( Catmur et al, 2007 ): if this process could be harnessed to associate misophonic trigger sounds with sound sources other than orofacial actions, then they might no longer evoke the misophonic reaction. Evidence for association having effects on perceived aversiveness of sounds comes from Samermit et al (2019) in which aversive sounds were either associated with a positive or negative source. The same sound when associated with a positive source was rated as less unpleasant and also produced fewer bodily sensations compared with when association was with its original negative source.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Motor Basis for Misophonia

et al. 2021

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Misophonia is a common disorder characterized by the experience of strong negative emotions of anger and anxiety in response to certain everyday sounds, such as those generated by other people eating, drinking, and breathing. The commonplace nature of these “trigger” sounds makes misophonia a devastating disorder for sufferers and their families. How such innocuous sounds trigger this response is unknown. Since most trigger sounds are generated by orofacial movements (e.g., chewing) in others, we hypothesized that the mirror neuron system related to orofacial movements could underlie misophonia. We analyzed resting state fMRI (rs-fMRI) connectivity ( N = 33, 16 females) and sound-evoked fMRI responses ( N = 42, 29 females) in misophonia sufferers and controls. We demonstrate that, compared with controls, the misophonia group show no difference in auditory cortex responses to trigger sounds, but do show: (1) stronger rs-fMRI connectivity between both auditory and visual cortex and the ventral premotor cortex responsible for orofacial movements; (2) stronger functional connectivity between the auditory cortex and orofacial motor area during sound perception in general; and (3) stronger activation of the orofacial motor area, specifically, in response to trigger sounds. Our results support a model of misophonia based on “hyper-mirroring” of the orofacial actions of others with sounds being the “medium” via which action of others is excessively mirrored. Misophonia is therefore not an abreaction to sounds, per se, but a manifestation of activity in parts of the motor system involved in producing those sounds. This new framework to understand misophonia can explain behavioral and emotional responses and has important consequences for devising effective therapies. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Conventionally, misophonia, literally “hatred of sounds” has been considered as a disorder of sound emotion processing, in which “simple” eating and chewing sounds produced by others cause negative emotional responses. Our data provide an alternative but complementary perspective on misophonia that emphasizes the action of the trigger-person rather than the sounds which are a byproduct of that action. Sounds, in this new perspective, are only a “medium” via which action of the triggering-person is mirrored onto the listener. This change in perspective has important consequences for devising therapies and treatment methods for misophonia. It suggests that, instead of focusing on sounds, which many existing therapies do, effective therapies should target the brain representation of movement.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Motor Basis for Misophonia

et al. 2021

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“…Recently, Samermit et al (2019) expanded on the role of synchronized audio-visual integration in the perception of aversive sounds. In that study, we presented neurotypical observers with a set of aversive sounds (e.g., sound of nails scratching on a chalkboard) synced with either the Original Video Source (OVS; e.g., a video of someone dragging nails down a chalkboard) or a Positive Alternative Video Source (PAVS; e.g., a video of someone playing the flute).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development and Evaluation of a Sound-Swapped Video Database for Misophonia

et al. 2022

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Misophonia has been characterized as intense negative reactions to specific trigger sounds (often orofacial sounds like chewing, sniffling, or slurping). However, recent research suggests high-level, contextual, and multisensory factors are also involved. We recently demonstrated that neurotypicals’ negative reactions to aversive sounds (e.g., nails scratching a chalkboard) are attenuated when the sounds are synced with positive attributable video sources (PAVS; e.g., tearing a piece of paper). To assess whether this effect generalizes to misophonic triggers, we developed a Sound-Swapped Video (SSV) database for use in misophonia research. In Study 1, we created a set of 39 video clips depicting common trigger sounds (original video sources, OVS) and a corresponding set of 39 PAVS temporally synchronized with the OVS videos. In Study 2, participants (N = 34) rated the 39 PAVS videos for their audiovisual match and pleasantness. We selected the 20 PAVS videos with best match scores for use in Study 3. In Study 3, a new group of participants (n = 102) observed the 20 selected PAVS and 20 corresponding OVS and judged the pleasantness or unpleasantness of each sound in the two contexts accompanying each video. Afterward, participants completed the Misophonia Questionnaire (MQ). The results of Study 3 show a robust attenuating effect of PAVS videos on the reported unpleasantness of trigger sounds: trigger sounds were rated as significantly less unpleasant when paired with PAVS with than OVS. Moreover, this attenuating effect was present in nearly every participant (99 out of 102) regardless of their score on the MQ. In fact, we found a moderate positive correlation between the PAVS-OVS difference and misophonia severity scores. Overall our results provide validation that the SSV database is a useful stimulus database to study how misophonic responses can be modulated by visual contexts. Here, we release the SSV database with the best 18 PAVS and 18 OVS videos used in Study 3 along with aggregate ratings of audio-video match and pleasantness (https://osf.io/3ysfh/). We also provide detailed instructions on how to produce these videos, with the hope that this database grows and improves through collaborations with the community of misophonia researchers.

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“…For the purpose of this study, we consider information from two modalities as integrated when the addition of a second modality modulates the perception of the first modality (e.g., Etzi et al, 2018;Samermit et al, 2019;Taffou et al, 2013), or vice versa, or when the two modalities are combined into a unified multimodal percept (see Collignon et al, 2008;Kokinous et al, 2015 for similar descriptions). This combination into a unified percept could be indicated by, e.g., a gain in task performance larger or smaller than expected on the basis of independent summation of auditory and visual information or when an illusory percept arises due to the fusion of incongruent visual and auditory information (McGurk effect;McGurk and Macdonald, 1976).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eyes on Emotion: Dynamic Gaze Allocation During Emotion Perception From Speech-Like Stimuli

Boer

Başkent

Cornelissen³

2020

Multisens. Res.

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Abstract The majority of emotional expressions used in daily communication are multimodal and dynamic in nature. Consequently, one would expect that human observers utilize specific perceptual strategies to process emotions and to handle the multimodal and dynamic nature of emotions. However, our present knowledge on these strategies is scarce, primarily because most studies on emotion perception have not fully covered this variation, and instead used static and/or unimodal stimuli with few emotion categories. To resolve this knowledge gap, the present study examined how dynamic emotional auditory and visual information is integrated into a unified percept. Since there is a broad spectrum of possible forms of integration, both eye movements and accuracy of emotion identification were evaluated while observers performed an emotion identification task in one of three conditions: audio-only, visual-only video, or audiovisual video. In terms of adaptations of perceptual strategies, eye movement results showed a shift in fixations toward the eyes and away from the nose and mouth when audio is added. Notably, in terms of task performance, audio-only performance was mostly significantly worse than video-only and audiovisual performances, but performance in the latter two conditions was often not different. These results suggest that individuals flexibly and momentarily adapt their perceptual strategies to changes in the available information for emotion recognition, and these changes can be comprehensively quantified with eye tracking.

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Cross-Sensory Stimuli Modulate Reactions to Aversive Sounds

Cited by 11 publications

References 27 publications

The Motor Basis for Misophonia

The Motor Basis for Misophonia

Development and Evaluation of a Sound-Swapped Video Database for Misophonia

Eyes on Emotion: Dynamic Gaze Allocation During Emotion Perception From Speech-Like Stimuli

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