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This post is Part 2 of a two-part series. Find Part 1 here.

In part two of this series of interviews with Dr. Prabhu, we discuss his recent studies on misophonia in more detail.

Jennifer Brout: Would you tell us about your research regarding Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) findings and misophonia? What does it indicate that individuals with misophonia demonstrated reduced scores on dichotic consonant-vowel (DCV) and pitch pattern tests (PPT)? How does this indicate possible poor auditory cortical processing?

Prashanth Prabhu: In our study, we assessed auditory processing abilities in individuals with misophonia using the dichotic consonant-vowel (DCV), pitch pattern test (PPT), and masking level difference (MLD) tests. We found that individuals with misophonia had reduced scores on DCV and PPT, which suggests difficulty in binaural integration and temporal ordering. DCV reflects cortical-level binaural integration and PPT reflects cortical-level temporal processing, so reduced performance points toward inefficient auditory cortical processing rather than a simple hearing loss problem. We hypothesize that people with misophonia may become hyperfocused activating their attention network, and this heightened emotional and attentional load may interfere with normal sound processing, which could explain why they perform more poorly on tasks that require selective auditory attention and cortical processing.

JB: In another study you and colleagues found that people with misophonia had reduced brain responses to novel auditory stimuli. Would you explain what this may mean in terms of misophonia? Would you also explain what you mean by “early auditory processing?”

PP: In our study, we found that individuals with misophonia showed earlier auditory late latency responses and reduced N1 amplitude even for a non-trigger speech sound, which suggests that their brain may process sound differently even before the sound is consciously evaluated as pleasant or unpleasant. This may mean that in misophonia, the auditory........

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