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Summary: A new study shows that myophony, strong negative reactions to certain sounds, is closely related to cognitive and emotional inflexibility. Participants with high seriousness of myophony fought to change between emotional tasks and reported rigid thought in daily life.
The condition was also strongly associated with repetitive negative thought or thought, which can drive or exacerbate anguish. These findings suggest that misophony is more than sensory: it implies deeper issues of emotions and executive function.
Key facts
Switching difficulty: people with myophony showed reduced precision in tasks that require emotional change, even when reaction times were not affected. Cognitive inflexibility: self -informed cognitive stiffness was significantly correlated with myophony, independent of depression, anxiety and hyperacusis. He measured the link with cognitive inflexibility.
Source: Neuroscience News
Myophony, the intense emotional response to everyday sounds such as chewing or smelling, has been seen for a long time as a sensory condition. But new research reveals that it can be much deeper, not only to sound sensitivity, but also how the brain regulates emotion, attention and thought.
A new pre-registration study has found that people with myophony not only fight with emotional reactivity to trigger sounds, but also exhibit significant impediments in cognitive and affective flexibility: the brain to change the approach, regulate the emotional response and move between mental tasks in the face of emotionally charged stimuli.
The study also found that this rigidity is closely related to rummy, a repetitive pattern of negative thought seen in many forms of mental anguish.
These findings offer a crucial window on the cognitive profile of myophony, highlighting that what is often supposed to “only” a reaction to sound can involve wider transdiagnostic processes of emotional regulation and executive function.
Beyond sound: the role of the brain in myophony
Misophony, which affects 5% to 20% of the population, is characterized by extreme discomfort or even an anger triggered by specific sounds, often involving orofacial human noise (such as chewing or clarifying the throat). Although it is not yet listed in the DSM-5 or ICD-11, myophony is increasingly recognized as a condition with serious impacts on life, from social avoidance to labor difficulties and emotional anguish.
However, until now, myophony has been addressed largely through the hearing processing lens or sensory hypersensitivity. What reveals this new study is that the underlying cognitive and emotional features, that is, inflexibility and rummy, can be critical to shape misofonic responses.
The researchers used the task of emotional memory and flexibility (MAFT), a new neurocognitive paradigm designed to measure how participants change between memory -based tasks and emotionally driven. Unlike traditional tasks that use neutral stimuli, the MAFT incorporates emotionally evocative images to better capture the emotional demands of the real world.
Affective flexibility and switching cost
One of the central findings was that people with clinically significant myophony showed reduced affective flexibility. Specifically, participants with greater severity of myophony served worse in change trials, where they had to quickly change from one emotional evaluation to another, such as reevaluating whether an image was emotionally positive or negative.
This difficulty was not simply slow reaction times; In fact, the reaction time did not correlate with the seriousness of misophony. On the other hand, the deterioration was in the precision of the switch, indicating a breakdown in the ability to change cognitive sets in response to emotionally outstanding stimuli.
It is important to note that these flexibility deficits persisted even after controlling general cognitive stiffness, anxiety, depression and hyperacusia, suggesting a specific and independent role for affective change in misophony.
Cognitive inflexibility and broader mental rigidity
Together with behavioral tasks, participants also completed the detail and flexibility questionnaire (DFLEX), a measure of self -report validated of cognitive flexibility. Here too, the results were surprising: the severity of myophony was strongly and positively associated with cognitive inflexibility.
In other words, people with myophony not only fought with emotional changes moment by moment in a laboratory task, but also reported a rigidity similar to a feature in daily life. These patterns reflect the cognitive difficulties observed in commonly comorbid disorders with misophony, such as TOC, autistic spectrum disorder and PTSD.
However, affective flexibility and cognitive flexibility did not correlate with each other, reinforcing the idea that they are different processes, each that contribute independently to the missphonic experience.
Rumination: the mental loop that will not stop
If affective inflexibility reflects difficulty changing emotional gears, rummy is the cognitive trap that keeps trapped people. Defined as a repetitive and negative thought of itself, rummy has long been involved in depression and anxiety, but this study shows its unique relevance for myophony.
The participants completed three different rummy scales, measuring the general persevering thought, the melancholy and the rummy of anger.
The three forms were significantly correlated with the severity of misophony, even after controlling anxiety and depression, providing that rummy is not simply a comorbid characteristic but a potential cognitive promoter of misofonic anguish.
Interestingly, the rummy did not correlate with affective flexibility (as measured by MAFT), but correlated strongly with cognitive inflexibility, providing a shared underlying mechanism.
The mediation analysis revealed that up to 43% of the link between cognitive inflexibility and misophony could be explained by rummy, pointing out as a key cognitive mediator.
Clinical implications: more than sound sensitivity
This study offers a critical rethinking of myophony: not only as a sensory disorder, but as a condition formed by fundamental patterns of attention, flexibility and regulation of emotions. The findings raise important questions about how we classify and deal with myophony.
Therapeutic interventions aimed at cognitive flexibility and rummy, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (TCC), approaches based on full attention and metacognitive training, are promising to reduce missphonic anguish. These methods could help people move away from rigid thought patterns and develop greater emotional adaptability against sensory triggers.
It also emphasizes the need for doctors to evaluate broader difficulties of the executive function and reflection trends in patients who report misofonic symptoms. Understanding this broader cognitive-affective profile can help prevent erroneous diagnosis and allow more personalized interventions.
Towards a new understanding of misophony
By integrating behavioral tasks, self-report measures and a pre-registration solid design, this study offers one of the most complete looks so far in the cognitive bases of myophony. The evidence is clear: myophony implies more than ears, implies how the brain reacts, regulates and reflects.
Future research should explore these mechanisms more thoroughly using longitudinal designs and clinical samples, as well as investigating whether the treatment of cognitive inflexibility and rummy can reduce symptoms over time.
For those who live with myophony, these findings can bring hope: not only for understanding, but for the interventions that go beyond silence the world, to help the mind to release.
Key questions answered:
A: Myofonia is a condition in which specific sounds trigger intense emotional responses, such as irritation, anxiety or anger, often seen as a sensory processing problem.
A: The study reveals that myophony is also characterized by the difficulty in changing between emotional tasks, rigid thought and high levels of rummy, which suggests a broader cognitive-emotional base.
A: Directing rummy and mental inflexibility through cognitive-behavioral therapies or based on full attention can help reduce misofonic anguish and improve emotional regulation.
On this research news of myophony and cognitive neuroscience
Author: Neuroscience News Communications
Contact: Neuroscience News
Source: Neuroscience News Communications – Neuroscience News
Image: The image is accredited to Neuroscience News
Original research: open access.
“The severity of myophony symptoms is related to deteriorated flexibility and the greatest rummy” by Vivien K. Black et al. British Psychology Magazine
Abstract
The severity of the symptoms of myophony is related to deteriorated flexibility and a high rumination
Misophony is a disorder that implies sensitivity to certain related sounds and stimuli.
Here, we explore the relationship between myophony and affective flexibility, which describes cognitive change skills against stimuli that evoke emotion.
The secondary objective of this study is to prove the potential association between myophony and cognitive flexibility, based on previous research findings.
The third objective is to examine the relationship between myophony and rummy.
One hundred and forty participants completed the task of memory and affective flexibility (MAFT), designed to assess affective flexibility, as well as a battery of self -report measures to evaluate the severity of myophony, cognitive flexibility and rummy.
The results suggested an inverse relationship between the affective flexibility measured by the precision of the switch, but not the reaction time, and the severity of misophony.
Cognitive flexibility was also inversely associated with the seriousness of myophony, but it was not attributed to task -based affective flexibility, which suggests two independent constructions involved in the manifestation of myophony.
The ruminance associated positively with the seriousness of misophony and inversely with cognitive flexibility, but not affective flexibility.
Taken together, these findings highlight a unique cognitive profile of myophony, characterized by stiffness at the psychological level through cognitive inflexibility and rummy, as well as at the level of executive function in terms of affective change difficulties.
