Background
Misophonia is often characterized by excessive negative emotional
responses, including anger and anxiety, to “trigger sounds” which are
typically day-to-day sounds, such as those generated from people eating.
Misophonia (literally ‘hatred of sounds’) has commonly been understood
within an auditory processing framework where sounds cause distress due
to aberrant processing in the auditory and emotional systems of the
brain. However, recent evidence from brain imaging shows involvement of
the motor system while listening to trigger sounds suggesting that the
perception of an action (e.g., mouth movement) produced by a trigger
person, not the sound per se, drives distress in misophonia. Observation
or listening to sounds of another’s actions are known to prompt
automatic mimicry/imitations. Apart from anecdotal evidence and a few
case studies, a relationship between mimicry and misophonia has not been
evaluated.