Misophonia is a strong, negative reaction to specific sounds (and sometimes to other trigger types). The reaction is often anger and tense muscles.
ASMR is a strong, positive reaction to specific sounds (and visuals & touch). The reaction is often calmness and relaxed muscles.
On the surface, ASMR and Misophonia seem to be opposites, but they have a lot of similarities.
Similarities between misophonia and ASMR:
- Hypersensitivity to specific sounds
- Triggering sound can be in real life or in a video
- Triggering sounds include chewing, mouth sounds, tapping, and more
- Consistent physical and psychological responses
- Earliest memories are usually in childhood
- Brain scan studies show differences to neurotypical brains
- Human-generated sounds stimulate the strongest responses
- The social context of the sound is very important
- About 5-20% of the population experience misophonia (similar for ASMR)
Common Q&A about misophonia (some include ASMR)
- How prevalent is misophonia?
- 2024: Study used two different tools to diagnose misophonia in 4,005 randomly selected individuals. One tool showed that 14.3% of participants had misophonia, while the other resulted in 8.3% with misophonia, and 4.6% had misophonia with both (concluding that 4.6% may be the most accurate number).
- 2018: 22% of the control group showed symptoms of misophonia
- 2014: 20% of individuals reported experiencing misophonia.
- A blog post by 23andme.com about misophonia and an associated gene also reported a 20% prevalence of misophonia.
- Another study done by Dean McKay using Amazon’s mechanical turk also seemed to show a 20% prevalence of misophonia in a random population sampling.
- Note: Although it is currently unknown, 20% may be a rough estimate for the percentage of individuals who can experience ASMR.
- How often do misophonia and ASMR overlap?
- 2018: 49% of the individuals who experience misophonia may also experience ASMR.
- 2018: 36% of individuals who experience ASMR also have symptoms of misophonia (compared to only 22% of controls having symptoms of misophonia).
- 2017: 43% of individuals who experience ASMR also may experience misophonia.
- Basically, this question shows that about half of the individuals who experience misophonia may also experience ASMR.
- Note: Here is an interesting Reddit discussion about having misophonia but still enjoying ASMR triggers.
- How important is context for misophonia?
- 2022: Misophonics experienced a more negative reaction to trigger sounds when they watched a video of the sound in action (a person chewing chips) compared to an unrelated video (a person tearing a paper) with the same audio.
- 2020: Two groups of misophonics listened to the same mouth sounds. The group who were told the mouth sounds were from a human, had a more negative reaction than the group who were told those same mouth sounds were from an animal.
- 2018: Preliminary data was presented at a 2018 retreat I attended (Milken Institute Research Retreat on Misophonia, Chicago) that showed the squishy sounds of someone chewing stimulated misophonia but the squishy sounds of mud did not as much. When people were tricked into thinking that the mud sounds were mouth sounds and vice versa, participants had less misophonia to the mouth sounds and more misophonia to the mud sounds. Like ASMR, this supports that misophonia may be socially-mediated.
- 2013: Misophonics have a strong negative response to typing sounds but not to rainfall sounds. This is curious because both result in similar tapping noises.
- Note: In contrast, ASMR individuals have a strong positive response to typing sounds but rainfall sounds are not common ASMR triggers. Again, curious because both are similar tapping noises. The key difference to typing sounds and rain sounds is the involvement of a human making the sounds – so misophonia and ASMR seem to be socially-mediated conditions.
- What do brain scan studies show?
- 2017: Misophonia is associated with increased activation in the anterior insular cortex, abnormal functional connectivity, increased myelination in vmPFC brain region, and increased heart rate and galvanic skin response. Overall these results highlight an increased emotional and sympathetic response possibly due to changes in brain wiring.
- Note: A 2016 fMRI study on ASMR showed that some regions had increased connectivity and some regions had decreased connectivity. Overall, ASMR and misophonia may involve altered connectivity due to altered myelination.
- Note: If ASMR and misophonia are commonly co-occurring conditions, then this may suggest similar changes in brain wiring, although with differently affected regions, neurotransmitters, or symptoms.
- Note: Misophonia, ASMR, synesthesia, and sometimes autism tend to all get thrown into the same discussions because occurrences of these conditions may overlap in some individuals. This does not mean that any are manifestations of the other, yet rather, that they all may arise due to atypical wiring that occurred early in development and manifested in childhood. It may be likely that these conditions overlap within individuals in the same way that an earthquake may cause plumbing and/or electrical changes in the same house, but that doesn’t mean the plumbing changes caused the electrical changes.
- Other info about misophonia
- 2024: Misophonia symptoms were higher in women, younger people, and people who are not married. Most people with severe misophonia first noticed it in childhood or their teenage years, and eating sounds were the most commonly reported first trigger.
- Other helpful publications about misophonia
Some thoughts I had about ASMR and Misophonia after attending the Milken Institute Research Retreat on Misophonia held in Chicago on July 24-25, 2018:
- Although sounds are the primary trigger for misophonia, visual triggers like the nervous shaking of legs or tactile triggers like a tight shirt collar or an itchy clothing tag can also trigger the same feelings as misophonia. This makes misophonia more like the multi-sensory aspect of ASMR. Interestingly, audio triggers may be the largest group of triggers for ASMR.
- I browsed some online discussion threads about the effect of medications on misophonia and noted that 13 out of 14 individuals reported SSRI medications helpful for reducing misophonia. Anecdotal reports of the effect of medications on ASMR usually state that SSRI medications reduce ASMR.
- Misophonia triggers usually involve another person, e.g., chewing, mouth sounds, breathing, finger tapping, throat clearing, slurping, foot shuffling, keyboard tapping, pen clicking, lip smacking, and coughing. Although non-human sounds like pets eating, air conditioner sounds, planes flying overhead, and the hum of refrigerators have also been reported to stimulate misophonia. This trend is similar to ASMR because most sounds that stimulate ASMR are created by other humans, although some non-human sounds can also less often stimulate ASMR.
- Family members may be stronger triggers of misophonia than non-family members. This seems to be different from ASMR. Strangers in ASMR videos can provide stronger ASMR triggers for many individuals than real life triggers.
- Overall, I wondered if chronic stimulation of NorEpi signaling could be driving misophonia. This could explain the increased anger and annoyance, heightened sensitivity to sounds and sometimes other stimuli, the muscle clenching, and increased skin conductance. The chronic NE could be pushing down serotonin levels to cause OCD symptoms which were often associated. The use of SSRIs would raise serotonin and push down NE levels to explain the reported reduction of misophonia symptoms I read about in some forums.
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