Misophonia (hatred of sound) is a newly defined psychiatric condition in which ordinary human sounds, such as breathing and eating, trigger impulsive aggression. In the current study we investigated if a dysfunction in the brain’s early auditory processing system could be present in misophonia. We screened 20 patients with misophonia with the diagnostic criteria for misophonia, and 14 matched healthy controls without misophonia, and investigated any potential deficits in auditory processing of misophonia patients using auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) during an oddball task.Subjects watched a neutral silent movie while being presented a regular frequency of beep sounds in which oddball tones of 250 Hz and 4000 Hz were randomly embedded in a stream of repeated 1000 Hz standard tones. We examined the P1, N1 and P2 components locked to the onset of the tones.For misophonia patients, the N1 peak evoked by the oddball tones had a smaller mean peak amplitude than the control group. However, no significant differences were found in P1 and P2 components evoked by the oddball tones. There were no significant differences between the misophonia patients and their controls in any of the ERP components to the standard tones.The diminished N1 component to oddball tones in misophonia patients suggests an underlying neurobiological deficit in misophonia patients. This reduction might reflect a basic impairment in auditory processing in misophonia patients.

The detection of a human face in a visual field and correct reading of emotional expression of faces are important elements in everyday social interactions, decision making and emotional responses. Although brain correlates of face processing have been established in previous fMRI and electroencephalography (EEG)/MEG studies, little is known about how the brain representation of faces and emotional expressions of faces in freely moving humans. The present study aimed to detect brain electrical potentials that occur during the viewing of human faces in natural settings. 64-channel wireless EEG and eye-tracking data were recorded in 19 participants while they moved in a mock art gallery and stopped at times to evaluate pictures hung on the walls. Positive, negative and neutral valence pictures of objects and human faces were displayed. The time instants in which pictures first occurred in the visual field were identified in eye-tracking data and used to reconstruct the triggers in continuous EEG data after synchronizing the time axes of the EEG and eye-tracking device. EEG data showed a clear face-related event-related potential (ERP) in the latency interval ranging from 165 to 210 ms (N170); this component was not seen whilst participants were viewing non-living objects. The face ERP component was stronger during viewing disgusted compared to neutral faces. Source dipole analysis revealed an equivalent current dipole in the right fusiform gyrus (BA37) accounting for N170 potential. Our study demonstrates for the first time the possibility of recording brain responses to human faces and emotional expressions in natural settings. This finding opens new possibilities for clinical, developmental, social, forensic, or marketing research in which information about face processing is of importance.

Odours alter evaluations of concurrently presented visual stimuli, such as faces. Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) is known to affect evaluative priming in various sensory modalities. However, effects of SOA on odour priming of visual stimuli are not known. The present study aimed to analyse whether subjective and cortical activation changes during odour priming would vary as a function of SOA between odours and faces. Twenty-eight participants rated faces under pleasant, unpleasant, and no-odour conditions using visual analogue scales. In half of trials, faces appeared one-second after odour offset (SOA 1). In the other half of trials, faces appeared during the odour pulse (SOA 2). EEG was recorded continuously using a 128-channel system, and event-related potentials (ERPs) to face stimuli were evaluated using statistical parametric mapping (SPM). Faces presented during unpleasant-odour stimulation were rated significantly less pleasant than the same faces presented one-second after offset of the unpleasant odour. Scalp-time clusters in the late-positive-potential (LPP) time-range showed an interaction between odour and SOA effects, whereby activation was stronger for faces presented simultaneously with the unpleasant odour, compared to the same faces presented after odour offset. Our results highlight stronger unpleasant odour priming with simultaneous, compared to delayed, odour-face presentation. Such effects were represented in both behavioural and neural data. A greater cortical and subjective response during simultaneous presentation of faces and unpleasant odour may have an adaptive role, allowing for a prompt and focused behavioural reaction to a concurrent stimulus if an aversive odour would signal danger, or unwanted social interaction.

The value of environmental cues and internal states is continuously evaluated by the human brain, and it is this subjective value that largely guides decision making. The present study aimed to investigate the initial value attribution process, specifically the spatiotemporal activation patterns associated with values and valuation context, using electroencephalographic event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants completed a stimulus rating task in which everyday household items marketed up to a price of £4 were evaluated with respect to their desirability or material properties. The subjective values of items were evaluated as willingness to pay (WTP) in a Becker-DeGroot-Marschak auction. On the basis of the individual’s subjective WTP values, the stimuli were divided into high- and low-value items. Source dipole modeling was applied to estimate the cortical sources underlying ERP components modulated by subjective values (high vs. low WTP) and the evaluation condition (value-relevant vs. value-irrelevant judgments). Low-WTP items and value-relevant judgments both led to a more pronounced N2 visual evoked potential at right frontal scalp electrodes. Source activity in right anterior insula and left orbitofrontal cortex was larger for low vs. high WTP at ∼200 ms. At a similar latency, source activity in right anterior insula and right parahippocampal gyrus was larger for value-relevant vs. value-irrelevant judgments. A stronger response for low- than high-value items in anterior insula and orbitofrontal cortex appears to reflect aversion to low-valued item acquisition, which in an auction experiment would be perceived as a relative loss. This initial low-value bias occurs automatically irrespective of the valuation context. NEW & NOTEWORTHY We demonstrate the spatiotemporal characteristics of the brain valuation process using event-related potentials and willingness to pay as a measure of subjective value. The N2 component resolves values of objects with a bias toward low-value items. The value-related changes of the N2 component are part of an automatic valuation process.