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Hansen 2022 challenge to Kumar’s associative learning explanation for non orofacial triggers in Misophonia

In their 2022 fMRI study, Hansen et al. challenge the claim by Kumar et al. (2021) that non-orofacial misophonia triggers arise only through associative learning after an initial orofacial trigger is established. Instead, Hansen and colleagues demonstrate differential insula connectivity with finger-related motor and somatosensory regions in individuals with higher misophonia scores, suggesting that non-orofacial triggers such as finger-tapping may have their own direct neural representations. This finding casts doubt on a purely associative-learning account and supports the possibility that non-orofacial triggers are neurally instantiated rather than secondarily acquired. (Hansen et al., 2022)