There's several similar, but distinct, and highly personal phenomenon around sensory input: Cold chills, ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) and Frisson being the most common.
Cold chills (often called "goose bumps" "goose pimples" "goose skin" "chicken skin") is the most common. Most people experience it from time to time. Like during a scary movie. It feels vaguely pleasant but unusual and is triggered by an emotional perception - like the anticipation of something scary. It's rarely accompanied by a strong emotional reflex in response.
The other two, ASMR and Frisson, are more rare. Most people don't experience these and even fewer experience both. For example, I can Frisson, but I can't ASMR. The numbers for each are something like 3-10% of the population. But it's only recently started to get attention and research.
ASMR is a pleasurable feeling due to a person specific stimulus. It can the sound of whispering, or box flaps rubbing on each other. Usually gentle sounds in certain categories. There are non-audio versions of it as well. something about the stimulus triggers an deep pleasurable feeling in most people who can ASMR. It's probably a little like getting a little endorphine boost or taking a little pleasure drug. It's usually accompanied by "cold chill" like physical reactions but also an internal mental/emotional reaction as well (typically pleasant). People who can ASMR describe an ASMR reaction as being distinct from a cold chill.
Recently the internet has allowed people who can ASMR to share triggers and discuss the phenomenon. I don't know much more about it than any other non-ASMR but I come across it every once in a while while investigating Frisson as the two phenomenon are often confused.
Here's an entire reddit dedicated capturing and sharing ASMR triggers.
Note that this doesn't mean any person who can ASMR can come here and use any trigger. The triggers are highly specific to the individual.
Frisson is a similar phenomenon and a bit better studied. I can talk more about this one since I can Frisson. Frisson is tied very specifically to musical perception, but can occur outside of music as well.
While the general population might be 3-10% Frisson-able, musicians tend to be much higher. It's similar to ASMR in the sense that a "trigger" kicks off an extremely pleasurable emotional and physical response. For different people who can Frisson, it's usually extremely specific passages in certain songs (or even certain performances of a song).
And yes, there are communities who share their frisson triggers You'll often see a link to a song and a description of the specific passage or time index when the sharer typically frissons. http://www.reddit.com/r/frisson
A frisson is like a very intense cold-chill, usually in the upper body. I get it very strongly along the sides of my upper spine between my shoulder blades. If cold chills can be ranked from 1-10 on an intensity scale, the typical frisson would be like a 20 to a 50.
But there's a deep emotional reaction too. I can't speak for all frissoners, but for me it's a transcendent all consuming emotion, like all of my emotions are triggered at once and amplified out of my own control. It feels like you are right in the middle of the most terrible, most beautiful experience a human can have. Like all of your closest loved ones died and were suddenly found alive at the same time.
The same passage can induce a frisson over and over again for a while. But a bit like a drug, you can "get used to" a passage till you've lost the ability to frisson to it. So frissoners are often on the lookout for new triggers.
Not suprisingly, it's linked to rises in dopamine levels and can be addictive in all the ways dopamine addiction works -- including the withdrawal crankiness. It's rare enough that I've never met another person face-to-face who I was aware was a fellow frissoner. Most non-frissoners just think it's "extreme enjoyment of music" but it's quite distinct and different. I never even knew what it was called until I was almost 30 and decided to investigate it a bit.
I discovered it when I was maybe 4 or 5, I found a passage on a tape and my mother found me playing that passage over and over again on the home stereo while hysterically laughing and crying my eyes out. For a long time my mother thought something was wrong with me or that I was unusually sensitive to music. I was actually so embarrassed by it that I hid it from everybody for a very long time.
But growing up I played some tapes to absolute death trying to get my "fix". Later I started to learn that if I over frissoned to the same musical passage it would eventually lose the effect. So I learned to ration it out and collected a sizable library of tapes I could cycle through. I started to mentally categorize music by how much of a frisson it could create. I started to use frisson to deal with stress and anxiety. It had all the hallmarks of a drug addiction I guess except I only had to find a supply of music and not street drugs.
Wow, I haven't heard about Frission before! Thank you for long and detailed explanation. I guess I can relate only to Cold Chills. I tried to listen to some ASMR triggers, and I got the same physical reaction and feelings of discomfort I get from fingernails scratching on a blackboard or hearing someone clean their teeth.
Sure thing. The ASMR triggers do absolutely nothing for me as well.
What really interests me is that there are probably other sensory phenomenon that are equally fascinating that very few people experience that aren't generally known (like synesthesia).
>I tried to listen to some ASMR triggers, and I got the same physical reaction and feelings of discomfort I get from fingernails scratching on a blackboard or hearing someone clean their teeth.
Glad to hear I'm not alone. My wife and I listened to the This American Life program on ASMR and I couldn't even stand the few short snippets in the program. The whispery sound of quiet talking where you can hear the speaker's tongue flapping around in their mouth makes me want to pull my teeth out with pliers.
You may still find that other noises are pleasurable, despite not enjoying that radio show. I find the sound of somebody's tongue rather off-putting but still get strong ASMR to other sounds, particularly foreign accents and rustling leaves.
Heh. Seriously though, it does feel like I have anti-ASMR. I swear, every single thing that is supposedly happy-making for ASMR folks is "please pull my teeth out with pliers" level bad to me. It's like the same neurological response, only wired to my revulsion center. Perversely though, I kind of enjoy the sensation of scratching a chalkboard with my fingernails.
I must be a particularly interesting case study. I can ASMR, but I also suffer from misophonia, which is sort of like ASMR's evil stepsister: an intense anger/aversion reaction to certain sound triggers. I've also got what I'd describe as a very low-grade and occasional capability for synesthesia.
I wonder if any of these conditions are related somehow.
My brother (he's adopted so no blood relation) has misophonia. He absolutely cannot stand the sound of paper and plastic bags and has difficulty hearing people eat. Those specific sounds absolutely enrage him. He runs a business and when he has to do paperwork he locks himself into his office so he can control the noise all the paperwork makes. When he emerges, he's visibly shaking with rage.
When he was younger he had some low grade Tourette's-like symptoms and various other neurological issues. Misophonia is supposed to have some kind of possible connection to Tourette's.
However, he may also frisson or ASMR (or something in the category) and has an intense interest in certain kinds of music and has built quite a few home-made ultra high end home stereos out of car audio components.
Amazingly, almost none of the things we're talking about here are well recognized by the psychiatric or neuroscience communities.
For me the major miso-triggers are the sounds of people eating and the sounds of people typing -- which are wonderful triggers to have in the tech industry. :) Weirdly, these sounds only seem to set me off in an otherwise quiet environment. I can handle the sound of a thousand keyboards aflutter in a busy office. I cannot handle a totally quiet room with one person's typing in it. I can handle a group meal, but if I'm alone in a room, listening to one or two people eating, it drives me nuts.
There are also visual triggers, to make matters worse. For some reason beyond my understanding, I hate when people bounce their legs around in their seats, or tap their feet repeatedly on the floor. Drives me insane.
I've never had Tourette's, or any Tourette's-like symptoms, but I completely sympathize with those who do. My symptoms are similarly uncontrollable. I know they're weird, and I know that telling people about them generally pisses people off. So I am consigned to my own special hell, quietly mustering the mental energy to block these stimuli out in everyday life, knowing that nobody understands the problem nor has the slightest sympathy. Medical research barely takes the condition seriously, and a lot of doctors still refuse to acknowledge that it's real, and not some Freudian, neurotic symptom.
In a way, I feel like what someone with Tourette's must have felt like, back before Tourette's was medically or societally acknowledged. Every now and then, misophonia gets a cursory writeup in a major newspaper or magazine -- but even that coverage typically ends with some dismissive caveat, such as "Medical science doesn't currently acknowledge this as a legitimate condition." Well, I'm certainly not doing this for the fun of it. :)
I always wondered why I can't stand the sound of people eating with an open mouth ('smacking their lips') or a dog licking themselves/chewing on a rawhide. For some reason, closed mouth eating and a dog biting themselves are tolerable. Our dogs are either very good at being dead silent or they do it all at night (and it sometimes wakes me up). I can also relate in how it isn't bothersome if it is amongst a sea of sounds, though I think a group of people eating would bother me quite a bit...
> I can handle a group meal, but if I'm alone in a room, listening to one or two people eating, it drives me nuts.
Hell yeah, my experience exactly. When I'm eating meals with family, I need there to be a conversation going, or at least a TV or radio running in a background - if there's only silence and sounds of eating, I'm starting to go crazy.
If I'm being completely objective and intellectually honest? I can't rule that out for sure. But it seems unlikely, given that most of Freudian psychology is outdated and quasi-animistic. If I have to choose between Freud and neuroscience, I'll take the latter almost every time. But more to the point, Freudian psychology isn't useful for this condition. It offers no answers and no practical guidance. It also offers a sort of intellectual dead-end. By filing this conveniently in the bucket of "neurosis," a doctor or researcher can basically wave his hand and say there's nothing he can do, and no further scientific inquiry is needed. Affected patients just need to "get over it" or "work through it" somehow. Even more sophisticated and modern psychological tools, such as behavioral therapy and sensitization training, don't have a great track record for successfully treating this condition.
As for the neurological explanations: as the previous poster mentioned, recent studies have implicated a lot of the same brain and nervous system structures in misophonia that are believed to be responsible for Tourette's. There is a high degree of comorbidity. While the two aren't causally related, there appears to be a physical/structural cause that results in either or both conditions with a fair amount of frequency.
Again, I have no definitive way of ruling out some blanket neurosis as the underlying cause. But it seems scientifically dubious, and more important, it's often unproductive as a line of inquiry.
Holy crap. Thank you for that link. I never knew about frission before let alone that I could experience it fairly powerfully. It seems like I have to "open my mind" to it before it can happen. Very cool mind hack.
You may not be able to if you don't already do it. It seems to be a bit like synethsesia, some kind of brain wiring resulting a slight perceptual difference that turns out to be like taking an electric shock to the pleasure center of the brain.
Yet another thing that may have never been discovered by most humans if not for high-speed networks enabling mass consumption of p2p multimedia and the discussion thereof.
Thanks for the explanation. I can ASMR but never knew it had a name. I like whispers, the sound of scissors cutting hair, light footsteps, bonfire crackling noises, pencil against paper...
I'll read more about it, but thanks for getting me introduced!
Cold chills (often called "goose bumps" "goose pimples" "goose skin" "chicken skin") is the most common. Most people experience it from time to time. Like during a scary movie. It feels vaguely pleasant but unusual and is triggered by an emotional perception - like the anticipation of something scary. It's rarely accompanied by a strong emotional reflex in response.
The other two, ASMR and Frisson, are more rare. Most people don't experience these and even fewer experience both. For example, I can Frisson, but I can't ASMR. The numbers for each are something like 3-10% of the population. But it's only recently started to get attention and research.
ASMR is a pleasurable feeling due to a person specific stimulus. It can the sound of whispering, or box flaps rubbing on each other. Usually gentle sounds in certain categories. There are non-audio versions of it as well. something about the stimulus triggers an deep pleasurable feeling in most people who can ASMR. It's probably a little like getting a little endorphine boost or taking a little pleasure drug. It's usually accompanied by "cold chill" like physical reactions but also an internal mental/emotional reaction as well (typically pleasant). People who can ASMR describe an ASMR reaction as being distinct from a cold chill.
Recently the internet has allowed people who can ASMR to share triggers and discuss the phenomenon. I don't know much more about it than any other non-ASMR but I come across it every once in a while while investigating Frisson as the two phenomenon are often confused.
Here's an entire reddit dedicated capturing and sharing ASMR triggers.
http://www.reddit.com/r/asmr
Note that this doesn't mean any person who can ASMR can come here and use any trigger. The triggers are highly specific to the individual.
Frisson is a similar phenomenon and a bit better studied. I can talk more about this one since I can Frisson. Frisson is tied very specifically to musical perception, but can occur outside of music as well.
While the general population might be 3-10% Frisson-able, musicians tend to be much higher. It's similar to ASMR in the sense that a "trigger" kicks off an extremely pleasurable emotional and physical response. For different people who can Frisson, it's usually extremely specific passages in certain songs (or even certain performances of a song).
And yes, there are communities who share their frisson triggers You'll often see a link to a song and a description of the specific passage or time index when the sharer typically frissons. http://www.reddit.com/r/frisson
A frisson is like a very intense cold-chill, usually in the upper body. I get it very strongly along the sides of my upper spine between my shoulder blades. If cold chills can be ranked from 1-10 on an intensity scale, the typical frisson would be like a 20 to a 50.
But there's a deep emotional reaction too. I can't speak for all frissoners, but for me it's a transcendent all consuming emotion, like all of my emotions are triggered at once and amplified out of my own control. It feels like you are right in the middle of the most terrible, most beautiful experience a human can have. Like all of your closest loved ones died and were suddenly found alive at the same time.
The same passage can induce a frisson over and over again for a while. But a bit like a drug, you can "get used to" a passage till you've lost the ability to frisson to it. So frissoners are often on the lookout for new triggers.
Not suprisingly, it's linked to rises in dopamine levels and can be addictive in all the ways dopamine addiction works -- including the withdrawal crankiness. It's rare enough that I've never met another person face-to-face who I was aware was a fellow frissoner. Most non-frissoners just think it's "extreme enjoyment of music" but it's quite distinct and different. I never even knew what it was called until I was almost 30 and decided to investigate it a bit.
I discovered it when I was maybe 4 or 5, I found a passage on a tape and my mother found me playing that passage over and over again on the home stereo while hysterically laughing and crying my eyes out. For a long time my mother thought something was wrong with me or that I was unusually sensitive to music. I was actually so embarrassed by it that I hid it from everybody for a very long time.
But growing up I played some tapes to absolute death trying to get my "fix". Later I started to learn that if I over frissoned to the same musical passage it would eventually lose the effect. So I learned to ration it out and collected a sizable library of tapes I could cycle through. I started to mentally categorize music by how much of a frisson it could create. I started to use frisson to deal with stress and anxiety. It had all the hallmarks of a drug addiction I guess except I only had to find a supply of music and not street drugs.
Happy to answer any questions anybody might have.