If you've ever seen those videos of people whispering, tapping on objects, role-playing as doctors and making hand gestures into the camera lens and questioned what the heck you've stumbled across, don't worry, you're not alone.

When Dr. Craig Richard, a biopharmaceutical sciences professor at Shenandoah University, first heard about autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), the feeling those videos are trying to elicit, he was puzzled too.

It was 2013 when Richard listened to a podcast that mentioned ASMR videos and how people were reportedly "magically healed" of their anxiety and insomnia just from watching them. He wasn't convinced.

But then they mentioned TV painter Bob Ross.

"That's when they got my attention because I used to come home and I'd turn on Bob Ross, and it would turn my brain to fuzz," Richard told MobiHealthNews. "It was something I'd kind of forgotten about, but as they started listing more and more examples of these ASMR triggers and these ASMR scenarios that led to this deep relaxation, I kind of just kept checking them off. Like, 'Oh my goodness, I have to check out these videos!'"

From there, he was hooked.

"Because I'd experienced it, I immediately went 180 [degrees] from skeptic to very intrigued," he said. "And I jumped on YouTube and yeah, these videos were super relaxing to me and I started reading through all these comments and seeing how popular all these videos were, and that's when it stood out to me that, wow, these aren't just entertainment and interesting and curious – these are beneficial to people."

As a researcher himself, Richard’s first instinct was to take a deep dive into all the published papers on ASMR to better understand this phenomenon.

"In 2013, there wasn't a single peer-reviewed research study that was published. So my search led to zero," he said.

"I thought, 'That’s OK, I'm sure there's plenty of sites that are just talking about the science, the potential mechanism, the biology, the evolutionary theories and really getting into the nitty-gritty.' I wanted to understand more of how these weird videos were doing this. And once again, I basically came across nothing."

Richard remembers seeing the occasional mention of ASMR in Reddit threads, but by and large, no one was really talking about it back then. Even now, as ASMR users report reductions in anxiety, insomnia and depression, there is still little in the way of mental health research.

SO, WHAT IS ASMR?

The ASMR experience is described as a warm, pleasant and tingly sensation that typically begins at the crown of the head and moves down the neck, spine and throughout the rest of the body. Often called "tingles," these sensations are associated with feelings of calmness and relaxation.

ASMR is stimulated primarily through audio and/or visual triggers such as whispering, tapping, hand movements and more.

Up until 2010, this experience didn't have an official name. That year, Jennifer Allen, a cybersecurity worker and early ASMR organizer, coined the term.

She chose to use a clinical-sounding name to encourage people to share their experiences without fear of judgment and to prompt deeper exploration into it, according to a past interview with Richard.

Since then, ASMR has exploded online, primarily through YouTube videos. The ASMR community on YouTube includes hundreds of creators – called ASMRtists – some of which have garnered millions of subscribers for their content.

The community has gone more mainstream in recent years, with W Magazine beginning a celebrity ASMR series and Michelob ULTRA airing an ASMR Super Bowl commercial with Zoë Kravitz.

THE ORIGINS OF ASMR RESEARCH

After searching for published ASMR research and coming up with nothing, Richard decided to make an online resource hub for himself, called ASMR University.

At the time of its creation, the website served as a place to begin laying down hypotheses for research, but it has since grown to include ASMR news, a podcast and educational information.

One of his first research initiatives after starting the website was the ASMR Research Project, a global survey to gather demographic data about ASMR. The project now has more than 30,000 respondents from over 100 countries, according to the ASMR University website.

The findings have yet to be published, but preliminary data statistically demonstrates that ASMR is a real and global experience, according to Richard. It also revealed the primary reasons that people seek out ASMR videos: to reduce their stress and to get help falling asleep.

Based on these discoveries, researchers believe ASMR could be a useful tool in treating certain clinical conditions.

"The triage list of what disorders are most likely to be helped by ASMR, we're seeing in our research, is anxiety and insomnia are tied [for first]," Richard said. Next is depression, with other disorders helped even less, he said.

Another study attempted to address one of the largest misconceptions around ASMR: that it's not real. Because, up until recently, everything known about ASMR was self-reported, some opponents challenged that the experience was made up.

To test its existence, a group of UK researchers from the University of Sheffield and the Manchester Metropolitan University conducted a study evaluating the emotional and physiological responses to ASMR.

The study was broken up into two parts. The first was a large-scale online survey where participants watched a range of videos – some ASMR and some not – and then reported on their emotional response while watching and whether they experienced ASMR.

"That was the first real evidence to suggest that people who say that they have ASMR are consistently also reporting increased feelings of relaxation after watching ASMR content but not content that isn't ASMR," Dr. Giulia Poerio, the study's lead author and now a researcher at the University of Essex, told MobiHealthNews.

The second portion studied the physiological response – in this case, heart rate and skin conductance – among people who report experiencing ASMR while they watch ASMR videos. It compared the responses of 50 participants who experience ASMR and 50 who don't.

To the surprise of the researchers, the ASMR-experiencing participants had a decreased heart rate but an increased skin conductance when watching the videos.

"So, it's not just that it's completely super relaxing, but also, especially when you're getting the onset of the tingles, it is quite an activating experience," Poerio said. "That also fits quite well with how people describe ASMR, so it's not just that it's really relaxing, but also that it's kind of blissful. So it suggests that ASMR has a very complex emotional profile. It's not just like happiness, which is clearly a very positive, pleasant emotion. It's not just like anxiety, which is very much a negative valence but arousing emotion. It's very complex and mixed."

She compares the emotional response to ASMR to that of nostalgia because, with that, people feel affectionate for the past while also longing for it.

This aspect of the study also addressed another common misconception of ASMR: that it is a sexual feeling.

"I think it stems from the fact that people conflate two separate concepts – they conflate ASMR videos with the feeling of ASMR," Poerio said. "So ASMR videos are videos that are intended to induce the feeling of ASMR in the same way that music might induce feelings of joy or music-induced chills or relaxation. But they're not the same thing, so the content is not the same as the emotional experience."

Poerio said for people who are unfamiliar with ASMR content, the purposefully intimate nature of these videos might lead them to think the feeling of ASMR is itself sexual.

"People might watch that content and think that because they think the content is sexual that somehow the feeling of ASMR is sexual, but it's not," she said. "And that's not to say that people don't watch ASMR videos and get sexually aroused, but ASMR itself is not a sexually arousing feeling."

But importantly for the sake of future research, this study shows a consistent physiological response to ASMR.

"One of the main things is that it in some way validates the self-reported experience. It's not just people telling us they're getting this feeling; their body is telling us the same thing," Poerio said. "And I think the main aim of that paper was to say to people, 'Look, it is a real thing. Let's start taking it seriously and let's build on this and let's start to study it properly.'"

A NEED FOR MORE RESEARCH

These studies and others have laid a foundation for ASMR exploration, but researchers believe more work is needed.

Poerio and her team, with support from the ASMR University community, have formed the ASMR Network to create a universal list of questions with the goal of driving future research around the biology and health effects of ASMR.

"There's so much potential for ASMR, and it's almost limitless," Poerio said. "And I think it could be trained so it could be like a therapeutic. So that angle I think would be really interesting."

But getting the research conducted is easier said than done, according to Poerio. Until a field is well-established in the science community, it can be difficult to get a study off the ground.

"Studying something completely new is always so much harder because science is very incremental, so if you don't have loads of stuff behind you, it's very much harder to try to get funding to do new research," she said. "We found it very difficult because people just don't believe that it's real or they assume it's somehow sexual or they think it's an internet thing rather than it being a real thing."

The only way to overcome this challenge is to get through it, according to Richard. As the network continues to uncover the biological functions of ASMR, outside researchers will eventually take notice, he said.

Some preliminary research topics that have yet to be completed are finding out what percent of the population experiences ASMR – Richard estimates about 20% – and learning more about the biology of ASMR.

"When we get those biological studies done, the hypothesis prediction that most people would have is a reduction in respiratory rate, reduction of blood pressure, a decrease in stress hormones," Richard said. "And that is a great bridge to therapy like once you publish that biological evidence of how basically this is physiologically reducing people's stress levels, we'll know those are beneficial.”

ASMR AS A HEALTH BENEFIT

Once the groundwork of ASMR research is set, it can move into clinical studies with real patients to see how it compares to other anxiety and insomnia therapeutics. 

"You want to create these studies to really confirm that this is a genuine non-placebo effect that people are getting from watching these videos and they're perhaps equal to or maybe better than other current evidence-based therapies," Richard said.

The potential to create a set of standardized ASMR videos proven to have similar health benefits as medication without the side effects and costs would be a "great healthcare benefit for everyone," he said.

"There are these patients who may not need medication right away, but they need something right away. And so just having healthcare professionals have a discussion with patients and say, 'Here are some options you could try: yoga, mindfulness, meditation, ASMR.' Adding this to the list of relaxation techniques that patients could try on their own, and it may be in parallel to other therapies that they're getting. These are things that patients can add and take control over their improvements."

What makes ASMR have so much potential value is its ability to get to the root of many conditions.

"Sometimes it looks like this miracle thing, but you can really boil it down to a pretty simple formula," Richard said. "It's the value of reducing stress and it's the value of just getting proper sleep, and anything that helps with that has a knock-on effect."

Although ASMR is still getting its footing in healthcare, there are some emerging startups in the space. For example, Monclarity's Mindwell app uses ASMR to help users fall asleep and meditate, and the Tingles app brings together more than 1,500 ASMRtists to one place. There's also AcousticSheep, which has developed sleeping headphones specifically for ASMR.

The field has made advancements since coming onto the scene in 2010, but this is really just the start for ASMR. Richard estimates that it could take at least five years before we see a clinical trial that produces results necessary to convince healthcare professionals that this is something to take seriously.

"The timeline is going to be slower than I want, slower than you want, slower than the average person who understands the power of ASMR wants," he said. "Unfortunately, this is how science moves forward – it builds off prior studies."