San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
How ASMR began to make itself felt
Over the past decade, ASMR has exploded in popularity as a category of entertainment online, through YouTube and Instagram vloggers who make videos that attempt to induce the sensation of ASMR. Hundreds of thousands of new videos are uploaded to YouTube every year. In 2014, Craig Richard, professor of biopharmaceutical sciences at Shenandoah University in Virginia, started ASMR University, an online archive and database for ASMR content. Now he’s one of the subject’s foremost scholars.
WHAT IS ASMR?
ASMR, which stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, is a sensation that people say feels like “brain tingles” or a “braingasm.” The sensation usually begins on the scalp and moves down the body. It can be induced by a variety of stimuli, or, in the term commonly used in ASMRspeak, triggers. These triggers aren’t negative; they spark feelings of contentment. Common stimuli that act as ASMR triggers include whispering, hair brushing, crinkling objects, nail tapping, crunching, chewing and slurping. People who experience ASMR report sensations of deep satisfaction and relaxation, tantamount to the feeling you might get after a relaxing massage, or in some cases, of euphoria. For many people, like Richard, ASMR is the only thing that helps them sleep.
HOW DID ASMR ENTER THE CULTURAL CONSCIOUSNESS?
The term ASMR was coined in 2010 by video viewer Jennifer Allen, who often felt a tingling feeling in her brain when she watched videos of space. Allen had done Google searches for years about her special sensation, but to no avail. It wasn’t until 2009 that she found a message board called SteadyHealth with a post titled: “WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD.”
“It’s been happening since I was a kid, and I’m 21 now,” the post read. “Some examples of what it seems has caused it to happen before are as a child while watching a puppet show and when I was being read a story to.”
Responses flooded in. Allen decided it was time to give the sensation a name. She wanted to name it something fitting, something that wouldn’t sound abstruse or sexual. In February 2010, the term autonomous sensory meridian response came to her. She introduced the name on SteadyHealth and made an ASMR group on Facebook. Soon others started sharing links to ASMRinducing videos, most of which included a person (usually a woman) speaking softly to the camera. By 2015, the videos had gained in popularity online.
ELEMENTAL ROOTS
Even though public discussion of ASMR has become more prevalent in recent years, Richard believes the sensation, for many people, is primordial. “My theory is that it’s strongest from the day we’re born, because that’s when we need it the most,” Richard said. “We need to be soothed by people who care for us, and we need to figure out who to trust.” The sensation is one people likely feel in intimate interactions as children, such as getting their hair brushed or tucked in at night. The tingles are the brain’s response to coziness, to a feeling of being secure and taken care of. “Every ASMR video is mimicking a trigger that we experience in real life,” Richard said.
In some popular videos, ASMRtists (people who make ASMR videos) roleplay scenarios that are otherwise ordinary but magnify their sounds to make them feel even more intimate. The role play is between the viewer and the ASMRtist.
WHERE’S THE SCIENCE?
Most of the science that’s being done on ASMR is unpublished and conducted by earlycareer researchers, Richard said. But in 2018, Richard and his colleagues used an fMRI brain scanner for the first time to look at what regions of the brain activated when a person experiences ASMR. What they found is that the brain activity during ASMR was similar to the ones that activate during soothing and bonding behavior, and when a person is being cared for.
“My hypothesis is that (our ASMR response) is strongest from the day we’re born, because that’s when we need it the most,” said Richard, whose findings were documented in a research paper. “We need to be soothed by people who care for us; we need to figure out who to trust.”
Teens make up a huge portion of the ASMR demographic. “They are in the transition stage from being constantly touched and (experiencing) positive personal attention to going through the teenage years, which are about establishing your independence, Richard said. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t yearn for positive attention.”
At a moment where increased disconnection affects all generations, opportunities for intimacy — romantic, sexual, emotional — in person can feel rare, with the internet as the only clear answer. What’s left is a simulacrum of closeness and care that takes place in the digital space. For a lot of people, the ASMR community fills a genuine void and even more so, makes a difference in people’s mental and physical health.
Richard said many who write to him claim ASMR has helped them with everything from insomnia to fibromyalgia. He suspects this is because ASMR helps decrease anxiety. In an inverted way, ASMR videos are like private, virtual cuddle parties — surrogates for connection.