From Tap to Tingle: The Science of ASMR

It’s probably happened to you before. You’re scrolling through your social media feed and stumble on a perplexing video. Why would anybody choose to watch 30 minutes of paint mixing? Why have over 100,000 people viewed this footage of a man chewing a hamburger, mouth open, into a microphone? Why on earth is that lady pretending to do her taxes on camera?

You might have another question, too: Why am I loving this?

It’s possible there’s no good explanation. But most of the time, the answer’s simple: You’ve strayed into the realm of ASMR.

What is ASMR?

ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response. It’s a relaxing sensory and emotional phenomenon that’s triggered by certain sights, sounds or sensations. It starts with a tingling sensation in your scalp that travels down the back of your neck, through your upper spine and then spreads throughout your body.

“What’s interesting about ASMR,” shares psychologist Susan Albers, PsyD, “is that people feel both relaxed and excited at the same time. It’s a paradoxical reaction.” While it’s sometimes referred to as a “brain orgasm,” the vast majority of ASMR connoisseurs consider the feeling to be soothing, not sexual.

Like chills or goosebumps, an ASMR response is involuntary. You can either be stimulated in that way or you can’t. You can’t force it — and many people can’t stand ASMR content.

People who do get a touch of the tingles identify their sensory triggers pretty quickly. As a result, we’ve seen the birth of a whole new genre of media dedicated to generating these responses. These content creators are often referred to as “ASMRtists.”

ASMR has an interesting origin story. The feeling is as old as our species at least. But nobody ever talked about it. We simply didn’t have the language to describe what, in many ways, is an odd and unnerving response to perfectly normal sights, sounds and feelings. Many assumed they were alone in the experience.

Enter social media. In 2010, a member of an online forum named Jennifer Allen decided it was time this phenomenon had a name. In under five years, it went from a social media buzzword to a topic of scientific inquiry.

“ASMR research is still in the beginning phases, but it’s already clear that there is a reaction happening on a physiological level,” Dr. Albers says. “Understanding the ‘how’ of the response could eventually lead to it becoming a clinically recognized treatment for a wide range of medical conditions.”

How does ASMR work?

We don’t have all the answers yet, but Dr. Albers says the working theory is that ASMR triggers specific regions of the brain associated with relaxation.

“It also releases feel-good neural neurotransmitters like endorphins, oxytocin and dopamine,” she adds. “The oxytocin makes you feel warm and connected, the endorphins excite you, and the dopamine reduces stress and promotes a feeling of calm relaxation.”

According to Dr. Albers, ASMR also boosts your mood and changes your brain waves. To be specific, it increases the strength of your theta waves, which also tend to go up when we’re focusing or engaging in mindfulness exercises like meditation or prayer.

Another study from 2018 put people who experience ASMR in an fMRI machine to see what areas of the brain are involved. It found that regions associated with reward and emotional arousal lit up. A brain mid-ASMR, they concluded, looks similar to a brain during frisson. Frisson is a phenomenon — also known as psychogenic shivers or aesthetic chills — that happens in response to viewing art, hearing music or listening to powerful speeches.

These findings don’t mean ASMR is “all in your head.” Those surging hormones also impact the way your body functions. Participants in a 2015 study reported an improvement in symptoms of chronic pain during and for a few hours after an ASMR session. Meanwhile, a 2018 study found that the sensation reduced participants’ heart rates and increased their skin conductance levels.

Who experiences ASMR

The only way to know for sure if you have the capacity to experience ASMR is to try exposing yourself to lots of different triggers. But as research progresses, scientists are noticing some common characteristics of people who experience the phenomenon.

“Researchers think that about 10% to 20% of people experience ASMR,” Dr. Albers says. “And a 2022 study that used the Big 5 personality test found that individuals who have this sense tend to score higher than average on the personality traits of openness and neuroticism. In other words, being more anxious may make you more likely to have and enjoy the experience.”

There are also certain characteristics that may prevent ASMR from occurring — or that trigger a negative response to the same sensory stimulation. Some people, for example, are more sensitive to sound than others. You may be more likely to find ASMR overstimulating (or even upsetting) if you:

• Have misophonia.
• Are a highly sensitive person (HSP).
• Have autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
• Have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

If you’re one of those people who doesn’t have a reaction to ASMR videos — or they strike you as creepy, annoying or unreasonably infuriating — know that you aren’t alone. In fact, you’re probably in the majority.

ASMR triggers

“When it comes to ASMR, there’s a lot of trial and error,” Dr. Albers notes. “Certain sounds and sensations are going to be pleasurable to certain people and not to others. So, you have to find the stimuli — if any — that you particularly respond to.”

While it’s a deeply personal experience, research suggests some triggers are more popular than others. The same 2018 study that examined ASMR-induced physical and psychological changes also asked participants to share their triggers. Their final list included 13 actions, eight of which were identified by over 50% of the study participants as triggers. They were, in order of popularity:

• People speaking softly.
• Having your hair played with or brushed.
• Whispering.
• Close personal attention.
• Getting a haircut.
• Interaction with the face or head.
• Tapping on hard surfaces.
• Watching people do focused work.

You might be noticing that not all kinds of ASMR stimuli are auditory. Sound is part of the equation for many people, but there are other categories of stimulus that can also fit the bill. And some videos blend multiple types. Other common types of triggers are:

• Personal attention. Personal attention ASMR videos usually involve a content creator looking directly at the camera, speaking soft words of affirmation or care and tending to the viewer in some way. They may roleplay as a barber, for example, making snip-snip-snip noises with scissors as they talk to you in a whisper.
• Clinical. Like personal attention triggers, clinical ASMR videos are often shot from the recipient’s point of view. Examples include an ASMRtist dressed as a doctor performing a fake exam, or watching an esthetician give a relaxing facial. These videos often have an audio component, too.
• Tactile. The French word “effleurage” comes up frequently in ASMR research. It’s used to describe light touch, especially in the context of massage. Other common tactile triggers include being gently tickled with a feather and playing with slime.

Another common feature of ASMR content is binaural sound. It’s an audio recording technique that provides greater depth of sound, which makes listening through headphones more closely mimic real-life interactions. Basically, you’re hearing different sounds in each ear. ASMRtists often achieve this effect by using two microphones at once.

Does ASMR help?

If ASMR isn’t your thing, you might be surprised to learn that it’s become a multimillion-dollar industry. It’s less surprising to people who feel its benefits.

“It can help with anxiety and depression. It’s particularly helpful — and healing — if you don’t feel motivated to do something active because ASMR can be very sedentary,” Dr. Albers states. There’s also plenty of anecdotal evidence out there to suggest it can:

• Improve sleep.
• Boost mood.
• Relieve pain.
• Improve concentration.
• Alleviate headaches.

ASMR isn’t an approved clinical treatment for any physical or mental health disorder yet. But millions of people use it — often several times a week, according to research — to do things like relax and cope with stressful situations.

A small but significant number of people who experience the sensation — about 5%, according to the 2015 study we cited earlier — seek out the content because they find it sexually stimulating.

“There are millions of videos free on the internet that you can explore that you can access anytime, day or night,” Dr. Albers says. “The downside is that they’re not clinically tested. So, these videos vary widely in terms of their production and their content and haven’t been clinically reviewed or regulated. The upside is that there are no side effects, which can’t be said of many medications.”

If you’re willing to take the time to uncover your triggers and find creators you enjoy, you may find that ASMR is an easy and entertaining way to build self-care into your daily routine.

Why is ASMR so popular?

Dr. Albers doesn’t think ASMR’s going to lose momentum any time soon.

“It’s pleasurable, user-friendly, free and it existed long before we had a name for it,” she says. “People can often recall early childhood sensory memories, like their parent brushing their hair or a particular sound they found calming. The people who experience this sensory response are accessing something that’s deeply ingrained.”

Remember the study that found similarities in the experience of ASMR and frisson? That study also found that “your brain on ASMR” closely resembles its response to affiliative behaviors. “Affiliative behaviors” is a fancy term for activities that make us feel close to each other. Think about how chimpanzees groom each other. It’s the same basic idea: The feeling it generates mirrors the feeling of communing with a friend, family member or partner.

Dr. Albers is also quick to add that — once people realized the sensation they were experiencing wasn’t wrong or inappropriate — “tingle heads” began forming tight digital communities. Those tight communities are likely even tighter because some people still unfairly stigmatize ASMR content as perverse or unsettling.

“I think it could be healing and pleasurable to join a community of people who all like the same kind of content or the same creator,” Dr. Albers affirms. “That sense of community and the cultural specificity of certain triggers may also reduce anxiety and stress.”

With any luck, scientists will eventually discover the source of ASMR and find a way to make its health benefits accessible to everybody. Until then, ignore the haters and tingle on. It’s good for you!