Extreme disgust at sounds such as sneezing, slurping or smacking. Professor of psychiatry Damiaan Denys of the Amsterdam UMC has spent years researching this psychological condition, called misophonia. On Thursday night that earned him an Ig Nobel Prize.
Fifteen years ago, a patient reported to Denys’ consultation hour with an obsession with sneezing, says the professor in a YouTube video from Amsterdam UMC. She said, “When I hear someone sneeze, I get very angry.” Denys, who was suffering from hay fever at the time, hoped not to have to sneeze at that very moment. “Because,” says the professor, “the previous day she had thrown the television across the room because of that sound.”
However, the professor could not make a diagnosis because there was no suitable description of the condition yet. “I didn’t know what was going on at all, was it an OCD? An impulsive disorder? I really didn’t know what to do with it. ”
Years later, Denys met a patient who said that her partner’s breathing was seriously disrupted. “At night when I’m lying in bed next to my husband and he starts to breathe, I have a tremendous urge to strangle that man, forcing us to sleep separately,” she said.
“Hate for sound”
Once searching the internet, Denys read that many more people appeared to have similar problems. There also turned out to be a name for it: misophony, which stands for “hate for sound”. It was the reason for Denys to start an investigation together with psychiatrist Arjan Schröder and to define misophonia as a disorder. In Amsterdam alone, some 3000 to 5000 people have been seen with complaints of misophonia.
The research earned them the Ig Nobel Prize. Denys and his team are “incredibly happy”, also “a little confused” about it. “The Ig Nobel Prize is actually also a joke: laugh at science, and also a bit at our research. But we took the prize anyway because we think it is important that this condition gets the attention. ”
The Ig Nobel Prize is awarded in different categories prior to the real Nobel Prizes. It is a prize for research that initially looks funny, but still makes you think.