Ig Nobel Prize for Dutch research into ‘aggressive sounds’ | NOW

Nederlands research to the mental illness misophonia, in which someone dislikes certain noises that other people make, was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize on the night from Thursday to Friday, the organization of the alternative Nobel Prize.

Professor of psychiatry Damiaan Denys of the Amsterdam UMC has been researching the condition for years. People with the condition can become so aggressive with certain sounds, such as smacking, sneezing, or slurping, that they can become murderous.

In a video from the Amsterdam UMC tells Denys how he came up with the idea for the research. For example, he heard from a woman that she got angry when she heard someone sneeze. He later learned that another woman had a tendency to strangle her husband when he breathed hard at night. “We thought: we may have seen something here that has not yet been described in psychiatry. We ended up with a diagnosis of misophonia,” explains Denys.

Other Ig Nobel Prizes included a study in which alligators were given nitrous oxide to investigate how the animals communicate with each other.

Funny research that makes people think

The Ig Nobel Prize has been awarded annually since 1991 and goes to scientifically recognized and published research that sounds funny but also makes people think. The prize will be presented just before the presentation of the real Nobel Prizes.

Yet the Ig Nobel Prize is also a prestigious prize. The awards are handed out by Nobel Prize winners. The special ceremony, where winners are pelted by the audience with paper airplanes and children are allowed to interrupt speeches by saying they are bored, normally takes place at Harvard University. The winners may also present their research results at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Due to the corona virus, the ceremony was pre-recorded and broadcast online this year.

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