Exploration of Comfortable Sound Space for Migraine Patients

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate phonophobia to household noises for the purpose of exploring comfortable sound space for migraine patients. The study involved 16 patients with migraine and 24 healthy volunteers. Each subject was exposed to stimulus sounds and was asked to make sensitive evaluation of comfort/discomfort. Twenty kinds of stimulus sounds in 4 categories (animal voices, natural sounds, emotional sounds, and excessive noises/sirens) under 2 settings (high and low sound pressure levels with a gradient of 10 dBA) (40 kinds in total) were tested. As a result, the migraine group reacted more sensitively to changes in the stimulus sound than the healthy control group, and this inter-group difference was more marked under the high sound pressure setting. Household noises found to be unacceptable for migraine patients were "animal voices" and "excessive noises/sirens," and those acceptable for migraine patients were "natural sounds" and "emotional sounds." The latter two types of sound ("natural sounds" and "emotional sounds") were shown to have the potential of alleviating migraine when they are at low sound pressure level.

Identification of Everyday Sounds Perceived as Noise by Migraine Patients

“…Our research team attempted to determine which sounds migraineurs perceive as comfortable versus uncomfortable using a wide variety of sounds encountered in daily life. However, our sample size was small, and we did not identify which types of sounds were associated with different comfort/discomfort ratings, nor did we look at the acoustic properties of sounds associated with high discomfort scores (18).…”