Misophonia Milestone Timeline
Special thanks to Cris Edwards and Dr. Zachary Rosenthal for their feedback and suggestions.
For links to some of the latest research, check the soQuiet Misophonia Research page, which keeps a running list of published research, listed in reverse chronological order and separated into disciplines.
To sign up for a mailing list to receive updates about misophonia events and resources, visit the soQuiet homepage.
Text included in the timeline image:
Misophonia is not a new phenomenon: people have lived with misophonia long before it had a name. Thankfully, research and advocacy efforts have dramatically ramped up over the past few decades.
2001 - The term “misophonia”—literally “hatred of sound”—was coined by Dr. Pawel J. Jastreboff and Dr. Margaret M. Jastreboff, though, as it does not accurately represent the symptoms, it was not the only name proposed for the disorder.
2008 - The Duke Sensory Processing and Emotion Regulation Program was founded, which would later become the Duke Center for Misophonia and Emotion Regulation (CMER) in 2019. CMER supports misophonia research and education initiatives.
2011 - The article “When a Chomp or a Slurp Is a Trigger for Outrage” by Joyce Cohen was published in The New York Times, spreading awareness of misophonia to many people and giving those with misophonia a way to contextualize their symptoms.
2013 - The Misophonia Association hosted their first annual Misophonia Convention, a program that brings together researchers, clinicians, people with misophonia, and their families. The first peer-reviewed studies of misophonia were published.
2017 - “The Brain Basis for Misophonia,” a study by Dr. Sukhbinder Kumar and colleagues at Newcastle University, found that people with misophonia had abnormal functioning of the anterior insular cortex, further validating misophonia as a distinct disorder.
2019 - soQuiet was founded— though not a 501(c)(3) nonprofit until 2021— providing free events and resources for people and families whose lives are affected by misophonia. The Misophonia Research Fund also began and has since provided over $10 million in grants.
2020 - The Misophonia Podcast, hosted by Adeel Ahmad, posted its first episode of now more than 200. In the first randomized controlled trial examining a treatment, Jager et al. found that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) had both short-term and long-term efficacy.
2022 - In the same year that the misophonia section of the Frontiers in Neuroscience journal was created, “The Consensus Definition for Misophonia: A Delphi Study” was published, allowing for more cohesive research and clinical conversations about misophonia.
2023 - Sounds like Misophonia: How to Stop Small Noises from Causing Extreme Reactions by Dr. Jane Gregory and Adeel Ahmad became the first book about misophonia to be published by a major publishing company.
2024 - Over 950 people attended soQuiet’s second annual Conversations About Research for Everyone (CARE) event, making it the most-attended advocacy event for misophonia to date.
As awareness spreads and research continues to grow, living with misophonia will get easier. Know that your participation, whether merely a viewer of this graphic or as a person with lived experience, helps that kind of change happen.
