ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response)

ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, a term used to describe a tingling, calming sensation that typically begins on the scalp and can spread down the neck, spine, or limbs.

People often describe it as a gentle, wave-like feeling that induces deep relaxation and a sense of well-being.

Not everyone experiences ASMR. For those who do, early research suggests it may ease stress and low mood and help with sleep, although the evidence is still preliminary.

This sensation is typically triggered by specific auditory or visual cues, such as whispering, soft tapping, or focused tasks.

Over the last decade, ASMR has gained massive popularity online, with millions of videos dedicated to recreating these experiences.

Before 2010 the sensation had no name. Many people who felt it assumed they were the only ones. Allen chose a deliberately clinical label so the experience would not be mistaken for something sexual or mystical.

Each word in the name has a job. Autonomous means the feeling arises spontaneously within the person, and sensory means it involves the senses. Meridian refers to a peak of feeling, and response marks it as a reaction to a trigger.

What Does ASMR Feel Like?

People who experience ASMR often report a pleasurable tingling that begins at the crown of the head and flows downward.

This sensation may feel like a soft wave or gentle pins-and-needles and is typically associated with a state of calm, sleepiness, or emotional comfort.

Many people describe a quieter mind. Attention narrows onto the trigger, and intrusive thoughts fade. Barratt and Davis (2015) likened this to a flow-like state, an absorbed, effortless focus. People with more effective triggers reported deeper flow.

The feeling is often compared to frisson (the chills from music), but ASMR is usually longer-lasting and more relaxing.

ASMR viewers often feel soothed, nurtured or cared for. This is especially true when a video includes close-up personal attention or soft-spoken voices.

Not everyone experiences ASMR. Some people discover their response only later in life, after meeting a specific trigger, meaning a sound or sight that reliably sets off the tingles.

ASMR vs Frisson, Misophonia and Synaesthesia

ASMR is often confused with neighbouring experiences. Four comparisons help mark its boundaries.

• Frisson: A brief, arousing shiver at a musical peak, with a rising heart rate. ASMR lasts longer, calms rather than excites, and slows the heart (Poerio et al., 2018).
• Misophonia: ASMR’s mirror image. Everyday sounds, such as chewing or tapping, trigger anger or anxiety instead of pleasure (Barratt & Davis, 2015).
• Synaesthesia: A joining of the senses, such as seeing colours for letters. It co-occurs with ASMR more than chance predicts (Barratt & Davis, 2015).
• Meditation: Meditation produces a general relaxation response that is not tied to a trigger. The two can combine: a body scan beforehand strengthened tingles (Glim et al., 2022).

What Triggers ASMR?

ASMR is highly individualized, and different people respond to different types of stimuli. Triggers are typically:

Auditory

• Whispering or soft speaking
• Tapping (e.g., on wood or plastic)
• Crinkling paper
• Brushing or scratching sounds

Visual

• Slow hand movements
• Watching someone focus on a task (e.g., drawing, folding towels)
• Roleplay (e.g., medical exams or makeup application)

Tactile (Real or Imagined)

• Hair brushing
• Massage
• Personal attention scenarios

The first academic survey of ASMR (Barratt & Davis, 2015) mapped which triggers work for most people.

It describes ASMR rather than proving it works. The data are self-reported, come from a self-selected online sample, and include no control group.

A far larger survey later refined the picture. Greer et al. (2025) gave 16,679 ASMR viewers a 58-item trigger checklist and found four trigger groups: Roleplay, Watching, Interpersonal Care and Tactile. Roleplay explained the most variation in responses.

ASMR content creators, known as ASMRtists, often film using high-quality microphones (sometimes binaural) to emphasize subtle sounds.

Many videos are roleplays or demonstrations intended to recreate real-life calming experiences. People often explore different types until they discover what triggers work for them.

Benefits of ASMR

Many people use ASMR videos specifically to unwind, fall asleep, or ease emotional discomfort.

Most of the evidence below is self-reported, so these benefits are promising rather than proven.

Sleep

In the first large survey, 82% of 475 ASMR enthusiasts agreed they used ASMR to help them sleep (Barratt & Davis, 2015).

Relaxation was the most common motive (98%), and 70% used ASMR to deal with stress (Barratt & Davis, 2015). That reflects motives, not measured sleep. None of the studies reviewed here measured sleep objectively, for example with overnight sleep recordings (polysomnography).

Anxiety and Mood

ASMR may lift mood, but only in experiencers. Watching ASMR videos raised pleasant feelings in experiencers and not in non-experiencers (Poerio et al., 2018). Depressive feelings also fell after an ASMR video in people who felt tingles (Engelbregt et al., 2022).

In the founding survey, 69% of 70 respondents with moderate to severe depression used ASMR to ease their symptoms (Barratt & Davis, 2015). Evidence that ASMR reduces anxiety rests on self-report so far.

ASMR videos may serve as a form of emotional self-regulation, helping viewers feel cared for and grounded.

One interviewee (Trenholm-Jensen et al., 2022) said it helped during a panic attack:

“I had a panic attack one time and it (ASMR) was the exact opposite of a panic attack… it’s like being washed over with relaxation.”

Pain Relief

In the first survey, 38 of 91 respondents with chronic pain said ASMR improved their symptoms. Another 40 reported no effect and 13 were unsure (Barratt & Davis, 2015). The reported relief was temporary.

These were self-reports with no control group, so expectancy could explain some of the relief.

Though this area is still under-researched, it shows promise for therapeutic applications.

Stress Reduction

In a laboratory experiment, heart rate fell by about 3.4 beats per minute while people who experience ASMR watched ASMR videos (Poerio et al., 2018). That drop is comparable to reductions reported for music-based stress reduction in people with heart disease. The effect is modest.

Skin conductance, a measure of sweat-gland arousal, rose at the same time.

Many people report lower stress levels and increased calmness after watching ASMR.

What does the science say?

Reward and Emotion Circuits

Brain imaging research finds ASMR activates regions linked to reward, emotion, and social bonding (Sakurai et al., 2023; Lochte et al., 2018). These include the nucleus accumbens (a core part of the brain’s reward pathway), amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and insula.

This suggests that ASMR may mimic the brain’s response to real-life social connection. These overlaps also align ASMR with neural circuits involved in empathy and musical “frisson” (chills).

The first fMRI study scanned only 10 people and had no comparison group of non-ASMR viewers (Lochte et al., 2018). Its findings are best treated as hypotheses.

Craig Richard, a physiologist at Shenandoah University, co-authored that study. In his book Brain Tingles, he describes ASMR as rooted in the brain’s response to gentle, positive personal attention and caregiving. This is an expert interpretation, not a tested result.

A later scan of 30 ASMR enthusiasts found that the amygdala, frontal cortex and insula responded only to videos each person liked (Sakurai et al., 2023). Personal preference, not the stimulus alone, seems to drive the emotional response.

Heart Rate, Skin Conductance and Attention

ASMR also induces a calming physiological response. The key evidence comes from two linked studies by Poerio et al. (2018).

It is the field’s strongest single study, because non-experiencers served as a comparison group. The physiological effects were modest, however.

Yet ASMR also keeps the mind alert. Skin conductance rises (Poerio et al., 2018), and pupils widen at the moments people report tingling (Valtakari et al., 2019). Both are signs of arousal.

EEG recordings of brain waves point the same way. In 38 young adults, ASMR-sensitive people showed lower alpha power, and the whole group showed lower theta and higher beta power (Engelbregt et al., 2022). The authors read this pattern as relaxation combined with focused attention.

Brain Connectivity

A brain imaging study by Smith et al. (2017) compared 11 people who experience ASMR with 11 matched controls. In people with ASMR, the brain’s default mode network (DMN), which is active during rest and self-reflection, showed weaker connections.

The same study found stronger links between the occipital, frontal, and temporal regions. This may help explain ASMR’s strong emotional and sensory effects. But the sample is small. The findings are also correlational, so they show an association, not a cause.

A later study of 28 people compared ASMR viewing with rest. Connectivity rose in regions involved in thinking about other people’s minds and about oneself (Lee et al., 2020).

Mindfulness and Attention

ASMR’s focused, gentle attention resembles mindfulness. In fact, a brief body-scan meditation before ASMR intensified tingles in one experiment (Glim et al., 2022). That highlights the role of mindful attention.

People with ASMR also score higher on mindfulness measures. In 284 people with ASMR, scores were higher than in matched controls on a general mindfulness scale and on a curiosity subscale (Fredborg et al., 2018).

Does Everyone Experience ASMR?

No. ASMR is a subjective phenomenon, and not everyone feels the tingles or calming effects.

Some people may experience it in childhood without realizing it has a name, while others discover it later in life.

Nobody knows what percentage of the population responds to ASMR. Most studies recruit from online ASMR communities, so they tell us about experiencers but almost nothing about how common ASMR is. Individual variation is large.

If you’re unsure whether you experience ASMR, you can explore various trigger types online to see if any produce a response.

Who Is Most Likely to Experience ASMR?

Researchers have asked who is most likely to experience ASMR. Personality is the best-studied factor, starting with Fredborg et al. (2017).

The matched controls make it one of the field’s stronger individual-differences studies. It is correlational, though. It cannot show whether personality causes ASMR sensitivity, results from it, or reflects a third factor.

A second study found a similar pattern. People with ASMR scored higher on Openness and on Empathic Concern, and lower on Conscientiousness (Janik McErlean & Banissy, 2017). Barratt and Davis (2015) also reported synaesthesia, in which one sense triggers another, in 5.9% of their sample.

Responsiveness may also be graded. Greer et al. (2025) surveyed 16,679 ASMR viewers and found three trait groups, high, medium and low, not a yes-or-no split.

Is ASMR Sexual?

Despite the nickname “brain orgasm,” ASMR is not a sexual experience for most people. In the first survey, only 5% of respondents used ASMR media for sexual stimulation, and 84% disagreed that they did (Barratt & Davis, 2015).

The confusion often comes from the close-up, intimate nature of ASMR videos, such as whispering, eye contact or roleplay. The responses differ. They resemble relaxation and comfort more than arousal, and the typical physiological signature is a falling heart rate (Poerio et al., 2018).

ASMR enthusiasts typically view the practice as a form of self-care or stress relief.

How Popular Is ASMR?

ASMR has exploded in popularity, particularly on YouTube, TikTok, and Spotify.

Some ASMRtists have millions of followers and earn significant income through ad revenue, sponsorships, and Patreon.

There are millions of ASMR videos available, from food eating to no-talking sleep aids, and more are uploaded daily.

How Strong Is the Evidence?

ASMR is a real, measurable state, but the evidence behind it is early. The strongest findings concern physiology, while claims about treatment remain premature.

What the Strongest Evidence Supports

The best-designed study is Poerio et al. (2018). It combined a large online experiment, a laboratory measure and a comparison group of non-experiencers. Because non-experiencers watched the same videos without the mood benefit, relaxing video alone cannot explain the result.

Positive affect rose only in people who experience ASMR, while heart rate fell and skin conductance rose. Other groups, using different methods, found the same calm-yet-alert pattern:

• Pupil Size: Pupils widened during reported tingles (Valtakari et al., 2019).
• Brain Waves and Body: EEG, heart-rate and skin-conductance recordings showed relaxation alongside focused attention (Engelbregt et al., 2022).

This calm-yet-alert signature is the field’s most robust result. Agreement across designs carries more weight than any single correlational report, however striking. The result does not rest on one laboratory or one measure.

Contemporary Research

Newer studies ask whether ASMR does more than relax, and why a whisper should produce a tingle.

Is ASMR More Relaxing Than Nature?

Hozaki et al. (2025) compared ASMR videos with nature videos, a stimulus with its own relaxation research, while recording pulse rate with a finger sensor. Both reduced pulse rate, but ASMR reduced it more.

A companion experiment found that audiovisual ASMR clips produced stronger tingles than audio-only clips. The tingle may therefore depend on sound and vision working together. Both samples were small: 30 and 34 participants.

A Proposed Mechanism: Predicting Gentle Touch

Flockton et al. (2025) proposed the Proximity Prediction Hypothesis. Close-up sounds, such as a whisper, engage a brain system that tracks events near the body.

That system, they argue, predicts gentle touch on the scalp and neck, detected by C-tactile afferents, nerve fibres that respond to slow, pleasant stroking. That prediction is proposed to calm arousal in the brainstem. It also raises vagal, or parasympathetic, activity.

In a survey of 64 people, pleasantness rather than arousal predicted whether a sound clip triggered tingles (Flockton et al., 2025). Liu and Kondo (2025) tested touch directly. In 46 people, sensitivity to gentle stroking predicted tingle intensity during eating-related ASMR videos, while heartbeat-counting accuracy did not.

Both studies are small, so the account is a testable hypothesis, not an established mechanism.

Small, Self-Selected Samples

Beyond that core finding, most of the evidence comes from small, self-selected samples answering self-report questions. Four limits matter most.

• Self-Selection: Studies recruit from ASMR communities, so they profile people who already identify as experiencers. They cannot show cause or prevalence.
• Tiny Imaging Samples: The imaging studies scanned only 10 and 11 people (Lochte et al., 2018; Smith et al., 2017). Results at that size are unstable.
• Weak Evidence Tier: Claims about depression, anxiety, pain and sleep rest on uncontrolled self-report and small experiments. The studies reviewed here include no systematic review and no randomised controlled trial.
• Bias Risk: ASMR went viral before it was a research question, and the communities supplying participants favour a positive answer. Appealing results are likelier to be published than null ones.

Is ASMR One Thing or Several?

Not everyone who calls themselves an ASMR consumer feels the classic tingle. Trenholm-Jensen et al. (2022) interviewed six self-identified consumers and analysed the transcripts for recurring themes, and several said they felt no tingle at all.

“I don’t know if I really get like proper tingles the way some people talk about it because I just like feel relaxed and like tired from it.”

Another described ASMR as “definitely all in your head” rather than a full-body experience. If many self-identified consumers feel relaxed but not tingly, studies may be pooling two things: a tingle-based response and a broader relaxing-media effect.

Averaging across both could blur the physiological signature that Poerio et al. (2018) and Engelbregt et al. (2022) isolated. This is a documented risk, not a settled debate.

The 16,679-person survey by Greer et al. (2025) is consistent with this: responsiveness varies by degree, so a sharp inside-or-outside boundary may be the wrong question.

Two steps would help most. Studies need objective markers of the tingle itself, such as pupil size or EEG, and comparison groups of non-responders recruited outside ASMR communities.

Should You Try ASMR?

If you’re looking for a calming, non-invasive way to unwind, ASMR might be worth exploring. Its possible benefits include reduced stress, better sleep and improved mood, although these rest mostly on self-report.

ASMR is a self-help option, not a treatment. It should not replace professional care for anxiety, depression or insomnia.

It does not work for everyone. Trying a variety of trigger types may help you discover what, if anything, triggers the response in you.

References

Barratt, E. L., & Davis, N. J. (2015). Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR): a flow-like mental state. PeerJ, 3, e851.

Engelbregt, H. J., Brinkman, K., Van Geest, C. C. E., Irrmischer, M., & Deijen, J. B. (2022). The effects of autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) on mood, attention, heart rate, skin conductance and EEG in healthy young adults. Experimental Brain Research, 240(6), 1727-1742.

Flockton, J. R., Preston, C. E. J., & McCall, C. (2025). The proximity prediction hypothesis: How predictive coding of CT-touch explains autonomous sensory meridian response and its therapeutic applications. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 19, 1688172. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2025.1688172

Fredborg, B., Clark, J., & Smith, S. D. (2017). An examination of personality traits associated with autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR). Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 247. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00247

Fredborg, B. K., Clark, J. M., & Smith, S. D. (2018). Mindfulness and autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR). PeerJ, 6, e5414. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5414

Glim, S., Braun, L., Hayd, S., Kuenz, A., Rosak, F., & Vom Bruch, J. (2022). Body scan meditation enhances the autonomous sensory meridian response to auditory stimuli. Perception, 51(6), 435-437.

Greer, J. M. H., Hamilton, C. J., Beckelhymer, D., Thompson, E., & Perilloux, C. (2025). Do whispering minds tingle alike? Exploring the relationship between ASMR-sensitivity, trait-ASMR, and trigger preference. PLOS ONE, 20(7), e0326346. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0326346

Hozaki, D., Ezaki, T., Poerio, G. L., & Kondo, H. M. (2025). More relaxing than nature? The impact of ASMR content on psychological and physiological measures of parasympathetic activity. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2025(1), niaf012. https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niaf012

Janik McErlean, A. B., & Banissy, M. J. (2017). Assessing individual variation in personality and empathy traits in self-reported autonomous sensory meridian response. Multisensory Research, 30(6), 601-613. https://doi.org/10.1163/22134808-00002571

Lee, S., Kim, J., & Tak, S. (2020). Effects of autonomous sensory meridian response on the functional connectivity as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 14, 154. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2020.00154

Liu, R., & Kondo, H. M. (2025). Affective touch sensitivity shapes tingling intensity in autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) experiences. Scientific Reports, 15, 34974. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-19082-8

Lochte, B. C., Guillory, S. A., Richard, C. A., & Kelley, W. M. (2018). An fMRI investigation of the neural correlates underlying the autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR). BioImpacts: BI, 8(4), 295.

Poerio, G. L., Blakey, E., Hostler, T. J., & Veltri, T. (2018). More than a feeling: Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is characterized by reliable changes in affect and physiology. PloS one, 13(6), e0196645.

Sakurai, N., Nagasaka, K., Sasaki, K., Yuguchi, Y., Takahashi, S., Kasai, S., Onishi, H., & Kodama, N. (2023). The relaxation effect of autonomous sensory meridian response depends on personal preference. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 17, 1249176. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2023.1249176

Smith, S. D., Fredborg, B. K., & Kornelsen, J. (2017). An examination of the default mode network in individuals with autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR). Social Neuroscience, 12(4), 361-365. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2016.1188851

Trenholm-Jensen, E. A., Burns, L., Trenholm, J. E., & Hand, C. J. (2022). Beyond tingles: An exploratory qualitative study of the autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR). PLOS ONE, 17(12), e0277962. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277962

Valtakari, N. V., Hooge, I. T., Benjamins, J. S., and Keizer, A. (2019). An eye-tracking approach to autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR): The physiology and nature of tingles in relation to the pupil. PLoS One 14:e0226692.

Further Reading

Barratt, E. L., & Davis, N. J. (2015). Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR): a flow-like mental state. PeerJ, 3, e851.

Poerio, G. L., Blakey, E., Hostler, T. J., & Veltri, T. (2018). More than a feeling: Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is characterized by reliable changes in affect and physiology. PloS one, 13(6), e0196645.

Lloyd, J. V., Ashdown, T. P., & Jawad, L. R. (2017). Autonomous sensory meridian response: What is it? and Why should we care?. Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, 39(2), 214-215.