A neuropsychological study of misophonia

Amitai Abramovitch; Tanya A Herrera; Joseph L Etherton

doi:10.1016/j.jbtep.2023.101897

A neuropsychological study of misophonia

J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2024 Mar:82:101897. doi: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2023.101897. Epub 2023 Aug 22.

Authors

Amitai Abramovitch¹, Tanya A Herrera², Joseph L Etherton²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA. Electronic address: abramovitch@txstate.edu.
² Department of Psychology, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA.

PMID: 37657963
DOI: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2023.101897

Abstract

Background and objectives: Misophonia is a recently identified condition characterized by negative emotional responsivity to certain types of sounds. Although progress has been made in understanding of neuronal, psychophysiological, and psychopathological mechanisms, important gaps in research remain, particularly insight into cognitive function. Accordingly, we conducted the first neuropsychological examination of misophonia, including clinical, diagnostic, and functional correlates.

Methods: A misophonia group (n = 32) and a control group (n = 64) were screened for comorbidities using a formal semi-structured interview and completed a comprehensive neuropsychological battery and self-report measures of depression, anxiety, stress, impulsivity, and functional impairment.

Results: The misophonia group significantly underperformed the control group on only 2 neuropsychological outcomes involving verbal memory retrieval. Subscales of the Misophonia Questionaaire (MQ) were inversely correlated only with measures of attention. The misophonia group reported significantly higher anxiety symptoms, behavioral impulsivity, and functional impairments, and had numerically higher rates of ADHD and OCD.

Limitations: To facilitate comparability, in lieu of a formal diagnostic algorithm for misophonia, we used a commonly used empirical definition for group allocation that has been utilized in numerous previous studies.

Conclusions: Misophonia was associated with a reduction in performance on a minority of cognitive tasks and a modest increase in some psychological symptoms and comorbid conditions. Correlational data suggest that difficulties with attention regulation and impulsivity may play a role in misophonia, albeit attention functions were intact. Results should be interpreted with caution given the variability in diagnostic definitions, and more research is needed to understand cognitive functioning under 'cold' conditions in misophonia.

Keywords: Attention; Comorbidity; Executive function; Impulsivity; Selective sound sensitivity.

MeSH terms

Anxiety
Anxiety Disorders / psychology
Emotions*
Hearing Disorders* / diagnosis
Hearing Disorders* / psychology
Humans

Supplementary concepts

misophonia