Whispers, tingles, and brain orgasms

My wife sent me a link to an article a couple of days ago about a phenomenon that I'd heard a bit about, but never really researched.

It's called an "Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response," ASMR for short.  The nickname, though, is more telling; people call it a "brain orgasm."

Of course, on some level, all orgasms are about what happen in the brain.  fMRI studies of people during orgasm show that during arousal and climax people experience a surge of neurotransmitters like dopamine and endorphin, as well as the "cuddle hormone" oxytocin (explaining why most of us feel snuggly after doing the deed, not to mention sleepy).  Without a brain response, there's no arousal, and I think just about everyone can think of times when what was going on in their brains -- worry, fatigue, frustration, anger -- interfered with their desire, or even ability, to have sex.

Gustav Klimt, The Kiss (1908) [Image is in the Public Domain]

It brings up the question, however, of who is volunteering for those studies.  I mean, I'm as comfortable in my skin as the next guy, and in fact in my twenties would have been voted the captain of the co-ed skinnydipping team.  But doing a solo performance while hooked up to a fMRI, with lots of people wearing white lab jackets and holding clipboards and peering at me and taking notes, gives new meaning to the phrase, "no way, José."  I mean, if getting off with an audience turns you on, more power to you, but even with a significant cash incentive I don't think I'd participate.

But I digress.

Anyhow, my point is, there have been a good many studies of the neurochemistry of the human sexual response, so this ASMR thing is interesting because apparently for some people, hearing certain noises (or, less commonly, seeing particular images) triggers a brain response that is very similar to orgasm but without the involvement of your naughty bits.  Here's how one person describes it:

While watching videos of space... a tingling spreads through my scalp as the camera pulls back to show the marble of the earth.  It comes in a wave, like a warm effervescence, making its way down the length of my spine and leaving behind a sense of gratitude and wholeness.

The similarity to an actual orgasm is obvious.  But why was it happening?

Turns out, we don't know.  Also unknown is why the people who experience ASMR are (1) nearly all female, and (2) have particular triggers that are specific to them.  The article in the New York Times (linked above) said that there are five hundred new ASMR-inducing videos uploaded to YouTube every day, which I suppose is understandable given what they can allegedly do to you.  Most of them are some combination of people whispering, rubbing fabric or combs or the like across microphones, stroking rough surfaces with fingernails, crunching paper, brushing hair, or chewing food.

This last one was a little puzzling right from the get-go.  A lot of people hate the sound of others chewing.  My older son, for example, was as a teenager really sensitive to sounds like that, and became nearly homicidal when he was around someone eating Doritos.  But apparently not everyone responds that way, and some people feel exactly the opposite.

So I was intrigued, and got onto YouTube and checked out a couple of the videos.  Here's a typical one:

 I went into it figuring I wouldn't respond, given that I'm male, also was a little dubious from the outset, and...

... sure enough, nothing, or at least nothing positive.  In fact, I found the noises intensely annoying.  Not only was I not soothed or tingly, after about 45 seconds I wanted to climb out of my skin.  So if you watched the video and had a brain orgasm or whatever, I'm happy for you, but that was certainly not my experience.

It does bring up the fascinating question of how the same stimuli can provoke entirely different responses in different people.  And this applies outside of the realm of listening to people brush their hair, or even what specific things are a sexual turn-on; consider how unique people's reactions are to music.  My wife and I, for example, both love music, but what particular pieces of music grab us are completely different.  When I find a piece of music I love, it definitely gives me chills, and has been known to bring me to actual tears.  The first time I heard Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, for example, I ended up sobbing, and couldn't have explained why.

Now there's something I'd be willing to do while hooked up to a fMRI machine.

My point, though, is that these kinds of emotional and physical reactions are pretty common in humans, as is the fact that what specifically triggers them is highly personal.  I think we're a long, long way from figuring out why that is, though, even on the level of being able to comprehend as individuals why a particular trigger is a turn-on for us.

In any case, the whole ASMR thing is curious enough that it deserves more research.  It's understandable that scientists have been reluctant to do so, I suppose; both the variability of response, and the general oddity of the phenomenon, probably pushes researchers to look into phenomena that are more likely to get grant approval.  (In fact, the New York Times article said that there have only been ten academic papers addressing ASMR ever published.)

But given the popularity of the videos, there has to be something to it, and it'd be cool to find out what that something is.  So even if the sound of someone whispering or twisting bubble wrap or chewing gum doesn't turn me on, I'd sure like to know why it has that effect on others.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a fun one; Atlas Obscura by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton.  The book is based upon a website of the same name that looks at curious, beautiful, bizarre, frightening, or fascinating places in the world -- the sorts of off-the-beaten-path destinations that you might pass by without ever knowing they exist.  (Recent entries are an astronomical observatory in Zweibrücken, Germany that has been painted to look like R2-D2; the town of Story, Indiana that is for sale for a cool $3.8 million; and the Michelin-rated kitchen run by Lewis Georgiades -- at the British Antarctic Survey’s Rothera Research Station, which only gets a food delivery once a year.)

This book collects the best of the Atlas Obscura sites, organizes them by continent, and tells you about their history.  It's a must-read for anyone who likes to travel -- preferably before you plan your next vacation.

(If you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!)

Music, emotion, and sex

I discovered the Bach Mass in B Minor when I was a teenager, and vividly remember the first time I listened to it -- I put the LP record on my dad's turntable, turned the volume up to 11 (that's for you fans of This is Spinal Tap) and lay on my back on the floor.  The work moves from dark to light, from driving rhythms to delicate sweetness, and I drowned myself in baroque counterpoint -- a wonderful way to die, I think.

Then came the bass aria, "Quoniam Tu Solus Sanctus."  It's a wandery little bit, quiet and mellow.  I almost drifted off to sleep.  And then, suddenly, the full chorus and orchestra explode into "Cum Sancto Spiritu."  I'll never forget that moment -- I felt like I had been physically lifted off the floor -- a shiver ran through my whole body.  It was one of the most visceral responses I've ever had to a piece of music.

Now, lest you think I'm some kind of classical music snob, I have to state for the record that I don't just have this kind of reaction to classical music.  Which music will send me into a state of rapture is a question I've pondered frequently, because there seems to be no particular rhyme nor reason to it.  I had similar reactions to Imogen Heap's "Aha," Collective Soul's "Shine," Iron & Wine's "Boy With a Coin," the Harlem Shakes' "Sunlight," OneRepublic's "Everybody Loves Me," Overtone's South African chant "Shosholoza," and the wild, spinning Finnish waltz "Kuivatusaluevalssi" as recorded by Childsplay.

All of which, by the way, you should immediately download from iTunes.

While I still don't understand why certain songs or pieces of music create this reaction in me, Robert Zatorre and Valorie Salimpoor of McGill University have now explained how the reaction happens.  In an article published Sunday in Nature, Zatorre and Salimpoor explain that what happens in the brains of music lovers when hearing favorite pieces of music is similar to what happens during sex -- there is a sudden release of the chemical dopamine.  This chemical is a neurotransmitter, and is part of what creates the rush of pleasurable sensation not only while doing the deed, but while listening to Bach -- or whatever music turns you on.  As it were.

Participants in the study underwent PET scans while listening to favorite pieces of music, and researchers found that dopamine was released in large amounts in a region of the brain called the striatum, which is part of the limbic system's pleasure-and-reward center.  Interestingly, the dopamine release started about fifteen seconds prior to a "peak moment" in the music in a part of the striatum associated with tension and anticipation, and then when the climax of the music came, there was a sudden rush of dopamine in a different part of the striatum, one connected to physical pleasure.

Myself, I don't find this surprising at all.  For me, music is all about emotion.  I can appreciate technically fine playing (or singing), but if a song or piece of music evokes no emotional reaction in me, it's not worth listening to.  When I teach music lessons, I've always tried to impress upon my students that when you can play the notes and rhythm correctly, up to the correct speed, you're halfway there; the other half is learning how to express feeling through the music.

I still find it a fascinating, and unanswered, question why certain pieces resonate with one person, and leave another completely cold.  I know that although we like the same basic musical styles, my wife and I have very different taste when it comes to specific songs, and neither of us can really put our finger on why a particular song blows us away, and another leaves us shrugging our shoulders.  I suspect that that is a question that will never be resolved -- it's as personal, and as mysterious, as one's favorite food, favorite color, or (more to the point, apparently!) what one finds sexually arousing.

There's also the question of what possible evolutionary purpose this reaction could have.  Something so powerful, and so universal, must provide some kind of evolutionary advantage, but I'm damned if I can see what it might be.

Despite the fact that there are still questions -- and in science, there always are -- at least now there's a physiological explanation of what's going on in the brain when this reaction occurs.  I find this fun and fascinating, and am glad to finally have an understanding of something I've always experienced, and always wondered about.

And now, I think I'm going to go listen to the Mass in B Minor.

Her tears, like diamonds on the floor

Crying is one of the weirdest biological phenomena.  Try to think about it from a non-human perspective, as if some benevolent alien scientist came to earth to study humanity.  So picture yourself being interviewed by the scientist, as you are clearly one of the more intelligent native life-forms:

Dr. Xglork:  "So, this crying thing I've heard of.  What is 'crying' and why do you do it?"

You:  "Well, when humans get sad, they start breathing funny, in little fits and starts, and water comes from their eyes."

Myself, I think that our Dr. Xglork would be justifiably mystified at how that sort of reaction makes any sense.  "How does that make you feel better?" he'd probably ask, looking at you quizzically from seven of his twelve eyes, while making notes on a clipboard held in his tentacles.

And yet, it does, doesn't it?  I'll admit, I cry easily.  Somehow guys aren't supposed to be that way, but there's no use denying it.  I cried my way through the last third of The Return of the King, embarrassing my older son to the point that for two years after that he refused to sit next to me in the theater.  I've cried over songs, television shows, and books (I almost had to wring out my friend's copy of Marley and Me before I could return it).

And after you cry, you feel better.  You don't look better, unless you somehow find red eyes and a snotty nose sexy; but you do somehow feel more relaxed and centered.  This universal reaction led scientists to surmise that crying was doing something to the levels of chemicals in the blood, so they did a study in which volunteers were put in a variety of situations that made them cry, and were asked to collect their tears in a vial.  Some were just exposed to irritants, like onions; others were shown sad movies (I'd have needed a bucket).  Then they chemically analyzed the tears to see if there were differences.

And there were.  There were proteins present in the tears we cry when we're sad that are absent in the ones we cry because our eyes are irritated.  This implies an interesting function for crying -- ridding our blood (and therefore presumably our brain as well) of chemicals which are making us feel sad or stressed.  Crying therefore does serve an important function, as our emotional reaction afterwards would suggest.

And just a few days ago a new study became public that sheds even more light on the whole thing.  Friday's issue of the journal Science included an article by Noam Sobel of Israels' Weizmann Institute of Science.  Sobel and his team took the crying study one step further -- they wanted to find out the effects of crying not on the person who was doing the crying, but anyone nearby.

So they collected tears from female volunteers (it being difficult, according to Sobel, to get a guy to cry in a lab; maybe they should have flown me over there).  They then allowed male volunteers to smell the vials of tears, including some vials of saline solution (as a control).

The team's hypothesis -- that there was a pheromone in tears that elicited empathy in others -- turned out to be incorrect.  When shown photographs of sad or tragic events, the men who'd smelled the actual tears didn't rate them as any sadder, or their emotional reaction to them as any stronger, than the guys who'd smelled the saline solution.

The real surprise came when the guys in the study were asked to rate various women's photographs for sexual attractiveness, and they found out that the guys who'd smelled the tears rated all the photographs lower than the guys who'd smelled saline did.  And -- most amazingly -- when given a quick saliva test for testosterone levels, the guys who'd smelled the tears showed lower levels of testosterone than the control group, and when given an MRI, lower activity in the parts of the brain associated with sexual arousal.

So crying, it seems, has a chemical "not NOW, honey!" feature.  This whole thing opens up a variety of questions, however.  First, it makes you wonder how the writers of Seinfeld ever came up with the idea of "make-up sex."  Second, do male tears have a pheromone as well?  Apparently Sobel's team has now found a "good male crier" and is going to see if there's any kind of reciprocal reaction in women -- and I'll bet there is.  And third, and most important -- does this explain the phenomenon of the "chick flick?"  I'll leave that one for you to decide.