Friday 03 February 2017 11:56 am

Scientists have explained why noisy eating makes some people angry

Does listening to someone eat a bag of crisps make you angry? Does the guy sitting next to you on the Tube with a whistling nose fill you with rage? Scientists have discovered that not only do you have a real condition – why it happens in the first place.

Misophonia is the name given to the condition which causes certain noises to trigger an angry reaction in some people – and a new paper published in the journal Current Biology has found so-called trigger sounds lead to an exaggerated emotional response in subjects who have the condition.

In all, 42 subjects were exposed to three sets of sounds: one set of neutral sounds such as rain falling, a kettle boiling and a busy cafe, one set of "unpleasant" sounds including a baby crying and a person screaming, and one set of sounds which trigger the condition, including eating and breathing noises.

The research found misophonics who heard the trigger sounds had an abnormal response between the anterior insular cortex, the part of the brain which perceives signals, and a network of regions responsible for processing and regulating emotions.

In other words: subjects with the condition responded abnormally to trigger sounds, with many experiencing an increased heart rate as a result.

The study found the symptoms of misophonia only become apparent around puberty, around age 12 – although some begin to experience them as young as five years old.

Is there hope for those of us suffering from the condition? Tim Griffiths, professor of cognitive neurology at Newcastle University and UCL, suggested there may be.

"This will suggest therapeutic manipulations and encourage a search for similar mechanisms in other conditions associated with abnormal emotional reactions,” he said.

Meanwhile, Sukhbinder Kumar, from the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University and the Wellcome Centre for NeuroImaging at UCL, added: “My hope is to identify the brain signature of the trigger sounds – those signatures can be used for treatment such as for neuro-feedback for example, where people can self-regulate their reactions by looking at what kind of brain activity is being produced"