Does it bug the hell out of you to hear other people eat?

[dlevere]

If yes, scientists say your brain is abnormal

[bungholio]

That title seems phrased in a way to make a person sound more like a weirdo than having a condition. I hate eating around other people, I don't want to hear them nor do I want them paying attention to me either. It makes me think of pigs at a trough seeing your social family all at a table eating and constantly talking blasting food out of their mouths and blah blah blaaaaaah. I don't like the sound of breathing or really anything like in that article. I used to uncontrollably stop breathing and had to get away from people a few times, and I was getting better for a while but now I'm getting worse again. I don't know about misophonia or whatever they called it, I'd just consider it that people have made socializing a hated experience for me throughout life and I'm almost always glad to get away from people.

[nensondubois]

"If yes, scientists say your brain is abnormal" - Under what classification states that these people are actually scientists? Let me guess, they're the same scientists that believe in sociology.

If you actually enjoy listening to people eat then chances are you're just fucking crazy!

[Pyriel]

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/...822(16)31530-5

That's the original paper. I couldn't find a CV for the lead author (aside from "Doctor"), but his publishing history shows a lot of neurological research into auditory conditions like tinnitus, auditory hallucinations, etc. The other authors are mainly neurologists and neuropsychologists. The paper is talking about extreme reactions, more akin to how an acrophobe feels when faced with a high place, than to run-of-the-mill annoyance or revulsion at someone smacking their lips loudly.

[nensondubois]

Its still largely trivial. Everything about living biology is extremely flawed and riddled with a myriad of things that can go wrong at any moment. I fail to see this as a legitimate condition. I call bullshit.

[Pyriel]

It's not a recognized condition, as far as I know. No need to poo-poo scientists conducting preliminary research into what's happening in the brain, though, just because (I assume) you're afraid someone might use "misophonia" as an excuse for something.

Why would the medical community care if you think it's trivial? My brother and his youngest son have mild Tourette's, which causes them to acquire a variety of odd tics for a while that are subsequently forgotten and replaced with others, and they occasionally react weirdly in conversation. No real verbal tics, or anything too disruptive to their daily lives, but they still have a diagnosable, albeit relatively trivial (for them), condition. It's still worth knowing, despite the fact that it changes very little for them. Even if it turns out that half the people in the world have "misophonia" around half the time—as determined based on the conclusions of this study—there's still something to be learned by trying to figure out why some brains respond in a benign way all or part of the time, and others respond consistently or frequently in an apparently disordered way that mimics a phobic response.

If it becomes the self-diagnosed-Asperger's, or "INTROVERT!", of excuses for not joining the gang for dinner, then I'm with you on calling bullshit on that.