An illustration of the route of ASMR’s tingling sensation. (Photo Credit: Emma L. Barratt, Nick J. Davis [CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
'ASMR’
Autonomous sensory meridian response or ASMR thoroughly went mainstream with its debut advertisement on February 3 at the Super Bowl 2019, the annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL).
What is ASMR, then?
According to Dictionary.com, ASMR is a calming, pleasurable feeling often accompanied by a tingling sensation. This tingle is said to originate in a person’s head and spread to the spine (and sometimes the limbs) in response to stimulation. The stimuli that trigger ASMR vary from person to person.
Some of the most common ones include whispers, white noise, lip smacking, having a person’s complete attention (as in having one’s hair cut by a hairdresser), as well as brushing, chewing, tapping, scratching, whispering, and crinkling, it said.
In a study published in 2015, Emma L. Barratt and Nick J. Davis of Department of Psychology, Swansea University described ASMR as “a previously unstudied sensory phenomenon, in which individuals experience a tingling, static-like sensation across the scalp, back of the neck and at times further areas in response to specific triggering audio and visual stimuli.”
The study identified several common triggers used to achieve ASMR, including whispering, personal attention, crisp sounds and slow movements.
Where does ASMR come from?
Dictionary.com further informed that term ASMR was coined by a woman named Jennifer Allen in 2010. It was around that time that she ran across a group of people on a steadyhealth.com forum who described a sensation she herself had experienced, but which no one seemed to understand well. Frustrated by the lack of community organization on that forum, she created a Facebook group called Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response Group, it added.
The group name was one that she believed captured the key characteristics of what’s now known as ASMR. She wanted to create a community that would bring together people who had also been experiencing this sensation. She consciously created a term that she felt people would be comfortable using: one that sounded objective, clinical, and impersonal. Soon after, a worldwide community began to take shape.
However, the concept itself has existed before the term ASMR was coined and there’s been a massive uptick in videos created online that attempt to trigger ASMR, Dictionary.com added.
The debut advertisement on February 3 at the Super Bowl 2019 was the undoubtedly the biggest ASMR mainstream event yet.
Check out the video here:
