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Have you ever experienced ASMR
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Have you ever experienced ASMR
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cheryl j
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Have you ever experienced ASMR
«
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11/04/2014 02:00:41 »
Last weekend National Public Radio did a feature on ASMR, or Autonomous sensory meridian response. It has been popping up in the news elsewhere this week. ASMR, if you aren't familiar with it, is the experience of a pleasant physical sensation, generally described as tingling and relaxing, even hypnotic, with certain sounds or images. The most common sounds are whispering, soft scratching, brushing, rustling, and typical images are calm, repetitive movements, and - I kid you not - watching Bob Rossi paint. In the NPR segment a woman described being transfixed by watching someone fold linen napkins over and over. People also describe the same sensation with certain activities like getting a hair cut, having their nails done (although it's somewhat easier to explain why actually being touched would result in a physical sensation.)
The sensation is a little like getting "chills up and down your spine" from say, hearing an emotionally evocative piece of music, or some other type of moving experience, but not quite. In fact that is what is so odd about SMRA, the sounds often
aren't
really meaningful or particularly artistic. It seems to be more of a sensory thing.
When I heard the story of NPR I thought, wow, I thought it was just me!
My most common triggers are certain voices, generally older and soft spoken, someone whistling a tune, a person playing the violin very slowly or learning a song on the piano or guitar for the first time- starting and stopping, playing the same notes over. I get it watching or listening to someone write or draw. And I have the hair cut thing.
Has anyone else experienced this kind of thing?
My own theory is that maybe it's a kind cross wiring in the brain, where activity in one area bleeds over into another unrelated area of the brain. Kind of like what they claim happens in people with synethesia (which I definitely don't have) where, for example, seeing a number five triggers the sensory experience of yellow.
Has anyone else experienced this kind of thing?
Here is a wikipedia link and the NPR link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_response
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/491/transcript
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