Jan Willem de Gee (PI) and Romke Rouw (Co-PI; FMG) have been awarded a Research Impact Award from the Misophonia Research Fund.

Misophonia is characterised by intense and involuntary stress responses (disgust, anger, or even panic) to certain, often human-made, sounds (e.g., chewing). The grant will be used to (i) develop webcam-based pupillometry as a sensitive, affordable and objective measurement tool of the misophonic response, and (ii) characterise the subcortical neuromodulatory mechanisms with 7T fMRI.

The apple of my eye: measuring, characterizing, and attenuating the pupil-linked misophonic stress response

Dr. de Gee’s Misophonia Research Impact Award builds on prior findings showing that pupil-size changes in response to trigger sounds can predict misophonia severity. This study will refine and validate an affordable, home-based tool to measure the physiological response to trigger sounds. The team will then expand the work to include brain imaging to identify patterns of brain activity associated with these physiological responses.