Dr Moller

[Guest guest]

Here is a nice email I got from Professor Moller--

I was not aware the misophonia was that common and that it could

include so many common sounds. I can very well understand from a

physiological view how it can occur - and it may not have anything to

do with tinnitus, which would explain why treatments for tinnitus is

ineffective.

Instead misophonia must be caused by incorrect routing of the neural

activity elicited by certain sounds. Since it is only certain sounds

the incorrect routing must occur from a high cerebral cortical

level. The incorrect target would most likely be somewhere in

the " emotional brain " , probably a similar structure as the normal

target for olfactory information, perhaps the central nucleus of the

amygdala. These pathways are probably anatomically there in everybody

but normally neural traffic is blocked by dormant synapses.

How to treat the condition is a difficult question. Appropriate

activation of neural plasticity would block the synapses in question,

how to do that is not clear. Repeated activation could perhaps cause

habituation and thus a decrease the problem, but unfortunately

repeated exposure could also do the opposite by strengthening the

synapses that connect auditory information to the wrong place in the

brain.

I have written books and articles about neural plasticity but never

thought about misophonia because I thought it was a rare condition.

I am on vacation now and I will think about what could possibly

relieve these problem.

Aage Moller