Body

Kumar 2021 findings about hyper mirroring in Misophonia

In a 2021 fMRI study, Kumar et al. investigated whether misophonia reflects abnormal auditory processing or instead excessive engagement of the motor system, particularly the mirror neuron system linked to orofacial actions. They found that individuals with misophonia showed increased resting-state and sound-evoked connectivity between auditory/visual cortices and the ventral premotor cortex, as well as heightened activation of orofacial motor cortex specifically to trigger sounds, despite no differences in auditory cortex responses. Activation in the orofacial motor area scaled with subjective distress and was more strongly coupled to anterior insula, a region associated with emotional salience. The authors conclude that misophonia is best characterized as a disorder of “hyper-mirroring” of others’ actions rather than primary sound hypersensitivity, with implications for targeting motor representations in treatment.