INTERESTING: Does loud chewing annoy you? There could be a scientific reason behind it
If you are someone who wants to pull your hair out when you hear someone chewing out loud, then best you read on...
Sitting at your desk at work and your colleague starts munching away, you look around to see if anyone else can hear the loud chewing sounds coming from their cubicle, but everyone is pretty much in their own little worlds and don't even look up.
That's your cue that you are the only one who is affected by the loud, somewhat invasive chewing sounds that seem to grind at your nerves and leave your inside voice screaming out at the top of its lungs...
If you are that person who hates certain sounds, so loud chewing, nails being scraped against a chalkboard, or someone who clears their throat / nose, then it's quite possible that you suffer from Misophonia.
No, it's not considered an official psychiatric condition despite the growing research on the topic.
Misophonia is characterized by certain sounds triggering immediate physical aversion. The majority of misophonia cases studied link the condition primarily to oral sounds such as breathing, chewing and swallowing. But the condition can also be triggered by tapping, clicking and fidgeting sounds, often associated with human movement.
Check out what the lead on the study says about finding patterns between two areas of the brain.
What surprised us was that we also found a similar pattern of communication between the visual and motor regions, which reflects that misophonia can also occur when triggered by something visual,
This lead us to believe that this communication activates something called the 'mirror system', which helps us process movements made by other individuals by activating our own brain in a similar way - as if we were making that movement ourselves.
Whatever the reason behind this, it should be common practice to chew softly or at least try to be considerate to those around you. Or is that too much to ask?
What do you think? Let us know by commenting below.
Image Courtesy of Pixabay