Study gives evidence misophonia is linked to visual sensitivity, at least in severe cases

Andermane et al. (2023), assessing 419 online participants across non-misophonic, moderate, and severe misophonia with the Penn Online Evaluation of Migraines (POEM) and a pattern glare task, found that the severe misophonia group was more likely to experience migraine with aura and gave stronger somatic reactions and visual distortions to aversive striped patterns at mid and high spatial frequencies. The authors described this as the most compelling evidence to date that misophonia is linked to visual sensitivity, at least in the more severe cases, while noting that previously observed visual triggers such as repetitive actions remain ambiguous because it is unclear whether they reflect visual sensitivity itself or the fact that such actions imply a sound. They concluded that migraine and pattern glare may share a common mechanism of increased cortical excitability (Andermane et al., 2023b).