By Sophia Lee-Baum, Third Year, Neuroscience
‘ASMR play-doh poppers *covered in wax edition*. Which glass fruit spread is your favourite? Answer in the comments: blueberry, raspberry, peach or kiwi. Triple kinetic sand slice, which colour was best?’
A brief phone break in Senate can so easily become half an hour lost to doomscrolling, sucked into a subconscious attention vacuum. Increasingly, the popularity of ASMR packaged into short video form, builds an AI-generated dopamine sucker punch of content, guaranteed to derail productivity. At face value, the surface substance isn’t particularly engaging, and can even seem a little unnerving – so what is it about ASMR that’s so addictive?
An autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is the tingling sensory experience often experienced due to specific auditory stimuli, creating a mild feeling of euphoria and relaxation. The paresthesia (physical sensation) often originates at the base of the scalp and moves down the spine. Although unfortunately not experienced by everyone, for the lucky few, ASMR has been associated with alleviated anxiety, better sleep and lower blood pressure!
Brain scanning techniques (fMRI) can be used to track the route of oxygenated blood flow, and under conditions of auditory/audiovisual stimulation were able to localise areas of the cortex associated with ASMR. For example, ASMR stimulates areas of the brain associated with emotional arousal and reward pathways, like the nucleus accumbens. The nucleus accumbens is one of many crucial brain regions in the mesolimbic dopamine pathway, a major reward system.
Although reward pathways have huge physiological importance, excessive stimulation can undo the benefits of positive stimulation like ASMR. The growth on social media platforms of ‘shorts’, and the scrolling epidemic also targets the mesolimbic system – the bursts of dopamine released from excessive time spent trawling through reels can lead to depletion and increased tolerance. The phenomena of ‘brain-rot’ describes elevated anxiety, cognitive fatigue and attention deficits because of excessive mesolimbic stimulation.
Those capable of reaping the rewards of ASMR are therefore in some ways stuck between a rock and a hard place. Watching ASMR can alleviate anxiety but consuming it in reel form can elevate it. Undeniably, short-form content has taken over, and the days of 30-minute YouTube crunchy slime videos are being left in the dust. Their resurgence may be necessary for ASMR fans wanting to unwind without the detriment of their brain health.
The deliberate consumption of ASMR videos has always seemed a little bit embarrassing, but why is this? Unfortunately, the answer isn’t quite as straightforward as an fMRI tracked bashfulness centre tucked away in one brain hemisphere, but as subjective as most emotional responses are. It could be the intimate nature of personal care, or fears of judgement for requiring comfort, or stigma around content presentation. Whatever it is, it’s made for easy pickings in the attention-economy, and ASMR in unassuming, algorithmic, bitesize deliveries has boomed. Production has been expedited by the rapid expansion of AI-generated content, and indulgent relaxation sessions have been swapped for stolen paresthesia hits between lectures.
Hyper-realistic generation of audiovisual stimuli by AI software often exceeds human capability, creating dramatically heightened sounds and surreal ‘satisfying’ images, such as spreading ‘glass fruit beads’, or a range of bizarre imagery to engage consumers. The novelty and integrated algorithmic delivery of AI content can heighten dopamine-driven scrolling addiction and overwhelming of reward pathways.
Research into the clinical role of relaxation techniques like ASMR are unfortunately underdeveloped, but with growing healthcare concerns over attention deficits in younger generations and the vast technological expansion of social media and AI, it’s definitely an area to watch out for. The benefits of ASMR are commonly under-utilised in those sensitive to them, and most people could do with giving their mesolimbic pathways a break from the scrolling.
Featured Image: Unsplash / Ritupon Baishya
Do you use ASMR to help you relax?
