Abstract
Background/Objectives: Misophonia is characterized by disproportionate emotional and physiological responses to specific “trigger” sounds, often accompanied by self-reported difficulty maintaining focus. Here, we seek to provide objective evidence of such cognitive disruptions by combining behavioral measures of auditory working memory with electroencephalographic (EEG) indices of neural processing. Methods: Fifty-five participants (23 misophonic, 32 control) completed a pitch-matching working memory task under three distractor conditions: individualized trigger sounds, neutral sounds, and silence. EEG was analyzed using a time-frequency approach to assess alpha (8–12 Hz) oscillatory activity during working memory retention at the source level; this was carried out using Independent Component Analysis (ICA). Results: Behaviorally, misophonic participants exhibited reduced overall working memory performance compared to controls, with no difference between neutral and trigger conditions, suggesting a general deficit in distractor inhibition. In exploratory analyses, EEG results showed lower alpha power across all conditions in the misophonia group, consistent with diminished ability to inhibit sound processing rather than trigger-specific effects. This lower alpha appeared to occur for sources in parietal and somatomotor areas, with group differences becoming apparent via alpha suppression around distractor onset. Conclusions: The results are consistent with claims made in the literature that misophonics show impaired attentional control and motor regulation, but conflict with findings that suggest that these issues are specific to triggers.