Does Misophonia Affect Spatial Hearing? A Study Using Closed-Field Assessment Tools

The study compared spatial hearing in individuals with misophonia, by examining interaural time difference (ITD) and interaural level difference (ILD) thresholds, Virtual Acoustic Spatial Identification (VASI) scores, and potential correlations between these thresholds and the Amsterdam Misophonia Questionnaire (A-MISO-S).

Standard group comparison consisting of 40 individuals with normal hearing was conducted. Participants were divided into two groups: 20 individuals with misophonia and 20 without misophonia (controls). Misophonia was diagnosed based on A-MISO-S scores. Behavioral assessments included ITD and ILD, and VASI tests (identification of eight virtual locations), which were carried out in a closed field environment (under headphones).

Multivariate analysis of variance results showed that the misophonic group demonstrated significantly higher ITD thresholds and significantly lower overall VASI accuracy scores. This effect was also reflected in location-specific performance on VASI test, with markedly poorer scores at the R45 and L45 positions, compared to the nonmisophonic group. Correlational analysis showed significant negative correlation between A-MISO-S scores and VASI accuracy scores, in a misophonic group. Furthermore, Fisher discriminant analysis revealed that ITD and VASI are effective predictors of group segregation based on spatial hearing performance, with an overall classification accuracy of 95%.

The findings suggest that misophonia may be associated with reduced performance on binaural hearing tasks involving temporal cues (ITD) and spatial identification tasks (VASI). This may be secondary to limited cognitive resources in complex spatial tasks and altered binaural temporal processing in misophonics.