Adnkronos Rome, March 20 (Adnkronos Salute) – Singer Rose Villain suffers from misophonia. She revealed it in an interview with Alessandro Cattelan for the new episode of 'Hot Ones' that will air tomorrow on Rai Play: "I have a problem with people, I suffer from misophonia and if people make noises I go crazy".
But what is misophonia? Literally, it is the hatred of sounds: some people can't stand the sound of chewing gum or chalk on a blackboard. But on a scientific level, it first appeared in a 2001 article written by two experts in hearing disorders, Pawel J. Jastreboff and Margaret M Jastreboff. In the article, the disorder is distinguished from other already known disorders, such as hyperacusis and phonophobia. In hyperacusis, the discomfort is caused by excessive activation of the auditory system in the presence of many sounds (even in subjects with a normal hearing level), while phonophobia is the fear of certain sounds. In misophonia, however, specific sounds cause a reaction of annoyance, especially those produced by the mouth and nose. However, there are also those who are sensitive to repeated clicking sounds, such as that of a click pen. The experts at Airc explain this on the page dedicated to the most curious disorders and symptoms.
Most of the studies on misophonia have been conducted since 2013. That year, the results of the research that was awarded the IgNobel Prize for Medicine in 2020, the satirical recognition for the most eccentric and absurd research, were published, and the media also began to take an interest in the problem. It is still a little-studied disorder and many questions remain unanswered. For example, we do not know what its prevalence is, that is, how frequent it is in the population. We do not even know if it manifests itself in relation to other disorders, nor what its exact nature is. Generally, specialists do not believe that a pathology of the auditory system is involved. Instead, it is hypothesized that it could be a neurological or psychiatric disorder, since from some preliminary tests it seems that listening to sounds capable of triggering reactions activates specific brain areas.
However, there also seems to be a psychological component. For example, many people with misophonia state in the questionnaires used by researchers that they began to feel disgusted at a young age when they heard their family members chewing. Their reaction to these sounds could also imply a 'moral' judgment that justifies the disgust. In practice, many misophonics consider it extremely rude to chew noisily. In other words, misophonia could be a form of hypersensitivity that does not concern the stimulus itself, but rather the meaning that the sufferer attributes to it.