Resolving Competition in Auditory Cortex: Effects of Emotional Content and Misophonia Sensitivity

How the human auditory cortex prioritizes relevant information amid concurrent sounds has been a long-standing question in auditory cognitive neuroscience. The present study used auditory steady-state responses (ASSR) to tag the electrocortical response to a tone embedded in concurrent naturalistic sounds, addressing methodological challenges with overlapping auditory streams. Participants endorsing low (LMS) or high in misophonia symptoms (HMS)—a condition with decreased tolerance to specific, typically orofacial, sounds—were recruited. Sounds varied in their emotional valence (pleasant, neutral, unpleasant, and orofacial) to investigate how emotional content modulates attentional competition and how competition is resolved in listeners with misophonia traits. Affective ratings, alpha-band changes, and pupil dilation in response to the sounds were also assessed. Hypothetical models of competition were tested, revealing a facilitation trend in the ASSR amplitude when accompanied by pleasant and unpleasant, compared to neutral sounds, regardless of misophonia symptoms. However, ASSR was selectively reduced in the HMS but not the LMS group when accompanied by orofacial sounds. Analyses of alpha-band, pupil, and rating data showed that the groups differed primarily in their response to pleasant sounds and orofacial sounds, with the HMS group exhibiting a stronger response to orofacial sounds than the LMS group.