Are you a fan of Bob Ross?The late American painter’s ‘Joy of Painting’ series has been a favorite among people for decades. And now millions of people are watching him paint on YouTube, describing the videos as calming and almost meditative.The autonomous sensory meridian response is a relatively new concept. Researchers are still confused as to what could possibly be the science behind the phenomenon and the ‘brain tingles’, as many like to call them, are often dubbed as pseudoscience at most. Yet so many people claim to have experienced the sensation when faced with certain visual triggers or sounds.To clear up a popular misconception about ASMR, it’s a perceptual phenomenon, not a mental illness or disorder. It has no adverse effects as such. Watching an ASMR video is not very different from treating your ears to rain sounds to fall asleep better. You might have already experienced it while getting a haircut or folding your laundry. The range of things that could possibly trigger an autonomous sensory meridian response is wide.As to how ASMR is being received by the internet, there are millions of videos with the ‘ASMR’ tag, and they show people tapping on objects or mixing paints.Read on if you’ve never experienced ASMR and you’re curious about how it feels, or if you simply want to learn more about this mysterious phenomenon.What is ASMR?ASMR, or Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, is a relatively new term that has been floating around on the internet for a few years now but what is it and why should you be paying attention to it?Popularly referred to as ‘brain massage’, ASMR is the tingling sensation that many of us get when we are exposed to a certain auditory or visual stimulus, like whispering, scratching, watching certain activities being carried out, gestures, and more. The feeling is described as starting at the scalp and moving down the spine. It is typically relaxing and a pleasurable experience for most people.Due to a lack of studies, we’re not sure about exactly how much of the population is affected by ASMR. The range in which ASMR affects people also varies. For some, it’s only a slight tingling sensation that’s hardly noticeable, and for some, it affects their fight or flight response and the stimulus might be unbearable.ASMR has become a popular word in pop culture. A simple search of the term will bring up thousands of videos with ‘ASMR’ in the title. The videos can contain anything from people playing with DIY slime, eating crunchy foods, whispering, or cutting up soap. Only in recent years have these ‘satisfying ASMR videos’ been circulating all over the internet. The phenomena associated with ASMR are still being researched and we don’t know too much about it.ASMR is sometimes associated with doing rather mundane or ‘pointless’ activities. While it may seem like that at first glance, ASMR has been proven to be useful in therapy, and many people regularly use the triggers to relax and fall asleep at night.The discussion on ASMR wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t talk about ‘ASMRtists’, content creators who produce intentional and amplified ASMR triggers in the form of media, usually video. According to ASMR University, an online blog that explores the sensations in-depth, the first YouTube channel dedicated to making ASMR videos was Whispering Life. The first whispering video on the channel was posted in 2009, and since then, there has been a flood of ASMR artists on the platform, creating all kinds of content.A popular genre of ASMR videos that you might have seen circling around on the internet is food-related videos. The people in the videos may be eating anything from your regular KFC bucket to 100% edible dishwashing supplies. Crunchy foods like mozzarella sticks, sea grapes (a type of edible algae), and chicken drumsticks are especially popular. If you don’t want to watch people chew food, there are also tons of channels where animals are in the spotlight, taste-testing all kinds of delicacies from watermelons to salmon.A lot of people also enjoy seeing videos where random objects are being crushed or squashed, all the better if the objects are squishy, colorful, and crunchy. Foam balls filled with glitter, slime, bath bombs, you name it. They’re crushed by hand or under car wheels but some people take it to the next level, introducing a hydraulic press to the mix.Make-up destruction is another strange yet satisfying genre, where people will cut up their lipsticks or break their eyeshadow palettes. Many people are understandably mortified when they see these videos of expensive makeup being destroyed.Of course, not everybody can attest to the pleasing effect of ASMR. In fact, there have been a lot of people expressing how the sounds and visual aspects made them feel uncomfortable or creeped out, even downright disgusted in some cases.Eating videos, for example, gross out a lot of folks. That’s why it’s thought that ASMR has unclear associations with misophonia, a phenomenon that involves having negative responses to certain sounds. The responses could be mild to intense, sometimes causing those experiencing them to go into a panic.If you relate to these symptoms when you watch ASMR videos, it’s totally normal. ASMR triggers don’t work the same way for everybody.History And Origin Of ASMRLet’s explore the history and origins of ASMR to find out where and how it all began.There are many gaps and question marks in the study of autonomous sensory meridian response. This is largely due to the fact that researchers haven’t been able to find any scientific evidence to back up the sensory responses.Through the little research that has been conducted, ASMR has been associated with synesthesia which is a neurological phenomenon where people make atypical sensory associations in the brain, blending different senses together. For example, a person could hear a piece of music and see colors associated with the music in their mind.One possible explanation for ASMR is, therefore, that particular stimuli subconsciously bring up similar experiences and the pleasant feelings associated with those experiences. For instance, some people experience ASMR when they see a hairbrush being cleaned. The people experiencing it in these cases have said that seeing the brush being cleaned reminded them of fingers being run through their scalps, a pleasant sensation for most people.The present-day historical origins of ASMR can be traced back to a discussion forum on Steady Health, a website that uses a community-based approach to share valuable health-related information. On October 19, 2007, user ‘okaywhatever’ made a post saying ‘I get this sensation sometimes. There’s no real trigger for it. It just happens randomly’. They then went on to list the times when they had felt the sensation. The post set off a discussion of what the sensation could possibly mean.ASMR responses are colloquially called ‘brain orgasms’, but the first (kind of) official term used to describe it was Attention Induced Head Orgasm or AIHO. It was later changed to Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response in 2010 when Jennifer Allen used the name for her Facebook group whose sole purpose was to find out what the mysterious sensation was and why it happened.While many people have attested to experiencing ASMR, it is inherently an inner experience and from a psychological perspective, those aren’t very easy to conduct research on. One can’t be too objective in studying ASMR because simply put, it’s just a weird feeling we get sometimes. It’s because of this fact that ASMR has been dubbed as pseudo-science by a lot of people, but maybe that’s just another reason why we absolutely need to do some more research into it. We do know one thing for sure, there’s something fascinating about thousands of people having strong reactions to seemingly ordinary activities.Characteristics And Features Of ASMRWhile researchers are still trying to figure out exactly what ASMR is, we do know some of its key characteristics. Read on!ASMR is described as ‘a warm, tingling, and pleasant sensation starting at the crown of the head and spreading down the body’.The feelings of ASMR have often been described as ‘brain tingles’.ASMR sensations have been compared with the chills and goosebumps that one might get while listening to music. However, while those responses are well backed up, there are a lot of blind spots when it comes to ASMR research.ASMR responses can be triggered by visual stimuli or sounds such as seeing slow movements, hearing rhythmic tapping, and soft scratching.People who experience ASMR have often grown up assuming that the weird sensation was universal, and it might seem so from the many content creators now even making money off of high-quality videos and recordings of sounds stimulating ASMR triggers.The physical effects of ASMR involve chills, goosebumps, and brain tingles. These responses are also associated with ‘aesthetic chills’, though those are mostly accompanied by a certain emotional state, such as wonder, increased heart rate, and faster breathing. However, ASMR triggers induce a state of relaxation while aesthetic chills are associated more with thrill or arousal.Certain ASMR triggers seem to have social cues associated with them. For example, viewers of whispering videos have expressed that they felt more connected compared to ASMR videos with regular sounds.Interestingly, people who experience ASMR have also reported experiencing ‘ASMR immunity’ when the brain was too frequently exposed to the stimuli.Studies between people who claimed to experience ASMR and those who didn’t have shown that there were differences in their brain activity. The parallels between emotional responses and sensory stimuli in ASMR are still being explored and it’s proving to be a fascinating point of research.A common misconception is that ASMR has associations with feelings of sexual arousal, but studies have shown that there is no connection between the two as such.Advantages Of ASMRWhile it may sound strange, many people swear by the calming effects of ASMR. So, if you’re looking for a way to relax and de-stress, you may be surprised at just how soothing ASMR can be.The positive effects of ASMR have been confirmed by many people who report that the exposure to specially produced stimuli such as ASMR videos has helped bring down feelings of anxiety or stress. A lot of people have incorporated ASMR videos into their nighttime schedules to help them sleep.The triggers also give those affected a sense of personal attention and comfort in certain situations, feelings akin to being groomed or massaged by another person.The relaxing effects of ASMR have been compared to the state of ‘flow’. The state of flow happens when you are so focused on the activity that you lose track of time, and your performance becomes a whole lot better. One feature of ASMR is that it tends to ground you into the moment and stabilize brain activity, both aspects that are involved in the state of flow. Though the increased focus is one of the lesser mentioned effects of ASMR as compared to its relaxation benefits.A physiological experiment conducted at the University of Sheffield showed reduced heart rates in participants who watched ASMR videos, as compared to those participants watching control (non-ASMR videos). Along with an average decrease of 3.14 beats per min, the participants also showed signs of relaxation and a sense of social connection. Decreased levels of sadness and stress were also observed in the ASMR participants. No such differences were found between the groups in the case of non-ASMR videos.With more research in the field, ASMR could be utilized to enhance therapeutic practices, rather than just generally providing a sense of well-being to those who experience it.If you want to try it out for yourself, there are tons of YouTube channels and online platforms where you can find ASMR content. ASMRtists do all kinds of things like paint, cook, tap on random objects, or just chat with you softly. The ASMR community online is huge, and ever-growing. There is all kinds of content for everybody.Effect Of ASMR On The BodySome people believe that ASMR has a host of benefits, including reducing stress and anxiety. Read on to learn more about the effect of ASMR on the body.The effects of ASMR on the human body have been compared to that of clinical stress reduction therapy.ASMR could even have a positive impact on cardiac health, as the effects have been akin to those of music-based treatments for cardiovascular disease.Individuals with conditions such as depression, stress, and chronic pain have reported experiencing temporary relief after exposure to ASMR stimuli like relaxing sounds.We know that ASMR triggers aren’t always pleasant and that some people may be averse to them but overall, ASMR doesn’t have any overtly negative effects.
Are you a fan of Bob Ross?
