A recent study used artificial intelligence to analyze how mice respond to painful, loud noises. By reviewing video recordings, the AI discovered that mice experiencing sound-induced pain typically adopted hunched postures, moved less, and displayed pain expressions like grimacing, squinting their eyes, moving their ears, and changing their mouth shape. The biggest discovery emerged when researchers tested mice with non-functional inner ear sound sensors and found they did not exhibit pain behaviors. This proves that sound-induced pain is a neurological response to hearing the actual noise, rather than physical pressure on the eardrums from the sound waves. Interestingly—and this is Hyperacusis Central’s takeaway—that particular finding might mean that if a person with hyperacusis could be made deaf via surgery, it would eliminate their sound-induced pain. That is something hyperacusis sufferers often debate. You can read the full study via the provided link: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.30.679579v2.full
REFERENCES
Seicol, B. J., Valles, A., Kohler, A., Glowatzki, E., & Wood, M. B. (2026). Machine learning guided video analysis identifies sound-evoked pain behaviors from facial grimace and body cues in mice. bioRxiv. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.30.679579v2.full.
This strengthens the case for neuromuscular Hyperacusis. “Jen” isn’t gonna like this, lol.
They used genetically modified mice, which means the mice are 100% deaf. In the case of surgical severing of the pedicure chain—like Andrew—this would not occur. It would cause a major hearing loss, but not entirely make someone deaf.
It’s possible in the future CRSPR could induce deafness, but I’m not certain.
But as I said, this bolsters neuromuscular involvement. No hair cell signal reception = no muscle movement from hearing.
Ossicular chain* stupid autocorrect
Good point!