The sound of someone chewing can be annoying. But what if only one specific person's chewing bothered you? And what if it went beyond annoyance to actual pain?
In this episode, the second of a two-parter on the Science of Sound, host Randy Scott discusses with Professor Laurie Heller what happens when our brain's relationship with sound goes wrong. Heller is a professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, where she runs the Auditory Perception and Cognition Lab. The discussion covers various sound-related disorders including tinnitus, auditory processing disorder and misophonia — a debilitating condition where certain sounds like chewing trigger intense emotional reactions. Through an engaging demonstration on the podcast, Professor Heller reveals how our brain's recognition of where a sound comes from, rather than its actual acoustics, controls our emotional responses. The episode also examines noise pollution's impact on wildlife, technological innovations such as enhanced virtual reality experiences and AI's role in creating and detecting fake audio. Professor Heller further discusses what’s next for hearing technology, including better treatments for sound disorders and more sophisticated hearing aids that can adaptively filter environmental sounds.
