argument for the Misophonia response forming independently of attention

Savard et al. (2026) had 30 adults with misophonia and 30 age- and sex-matched controls listen to music in one ear while trigger, unpleasant, or neutral sounds played in the other. Participants were told either to attend to the sounds or to attend to the music, and pupil size, skin conductance, and heart rate were recorded throughout. Pupil and skin conductance responses to trigger sounds stayed elevated in the misophonia group whether attention was on the sounds or on the music. from this the authors concluded that the misophonic response unfolds relatively independently of where a person directs attention. Because pupil responses to trigger sounds looked similar in both attention conditions and in both groups, they also proposed that the ability of trigger sounds to grab attention may be a property of the trigger sounds themselves rather than a mechanism specific to misophonia (Savard et al., 2026).