Heart rate variability as a candidate correlate of susceptibility to ASMR and music-induced frisson: an exploratory pilot study

This exploratory pilot study suggests that higher baseline heart rate variability is positively associated with an individual's susceptibility to experiencing ASMR and music-induced frisson, indicating that pre-existing autonomic flexibility may influence these sensory-affective responses.

The Gist

Imagine your body is like a high-performance car. Most of the time, we think about what happens when you hit the gas pedal (the stimulus)—like how the engine revs up when you hear a beautiful song or feel a tingling sensation from a whisper.

But this new study asks a different question: What is the car's engine doing before you even turn the key?

The researchers wanted to know if your body's "idle state" predicts whether you'll get those famous "tingles" (ASMR) or "chills" (frisson) when you hear music or soft sounds. They focused on two main things: your Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and your brain waves (EEG).

Here is the breakdown of their findings using simple analogies:

1. The Main Discovery: The "Flexible Engine"

The study found that people who are more likely to feel ASMR or music chills have a very specific type of "engine" running before the music even starts.

• The Metaphor: Think of your heart rate like a drummer.
  • Low HRV (Rigid Engine): The drummer beats at a perfect, robotic, metronome rhythm. Thump-thump-thump-thump. It's steady, but it's stiff.
  • High HRV (Flexible Engine): The drummer is jazz-playing. Thump-thump... thump... thump-thump. The speed changes slightly with every breath. It's not chaotic; it's flexible.

The Finding: People with the "Jazz Drummer" heart (High HRV) were much more likely to get the tingles and chills. The more flexible their heart was at rest, the more often they reported feeling those sensory-affective experiences.

2. The "Brain Antenna" (EEG)

The researchers also looked at brain waves, specifically something called "Frontal Alpha Asymmetry."

• The Metaphor: Imagine your brain has two antennas, a left one and a right one.
• The Finding: The people who got the tingles had a specific imbalance in how these antennas were humming. While this was interesting, it was a bit "noisier" and less consistent than the heart findings. It's like a radio signal that sometimes comes in clear and sometimes gets static. The heart signal, by contrast, was like a strong, clear FM station.

3. The Experiment Setup

The researchers didn't just ask people, "Do you like tingles?" They put 15 volunteers in a quiet room, hooked them up to sensors, and recorded their "idle state" for 5 minutes.

Then, they played a mix of:

• ASMR triggers: Whispering, tapping, eating sounds.
• Music: Beautiful classical pieces (like Mozart).
• Control: A boring train sound.

Afterward, they asked: "Did you feel the tingles or chills?"

4. What It All Means

The study suggests that susceptibility isn't just about the music or the whisper; it's about the listener.

If your body is already in a state of "flexible readiness" (High HRV), you are like a radio tuned perfectly to the frequency of emotion. When the music or whisper hits, your body is ready to catch that signal and turn it into a physical sensation (chills or tingles). If your body is "stiff" or rigid at rest, you might hear the same music, but your engine doesn't rev up in the same way.

The Caveats (The "Fine Print")

The authors are very honest about the limitations:

• Small Sample: They only had 10 people left after cleaning up bad data. It's like testing a new car design on a track with only 10 test drivers. It's a great start, but we need more drivers to be sure.
• Exploratory: This was a "pilot study." They are planting seeds to see what grows, not harvesting a full crop yet.
• Self-Report: They relied on people saying, "Yes, I felt it." Some people might just be better at noticing or describing the feeling than others.

The Bottom Line

This study is a hypothesis generator. It suggests that your heart's "jazz-like" flexibility at rest might be the secret sauce that allows you to feel the magic of ASMR and music chills. It's not just about what you hear; it's about the state of your body when you hear it.

Future studies will need to test this on hundreds of people to confirm if the "Jazz Drummer" heart is truly the key to the tingles.

Technical Summary

1. Problem Statement and Objective

Background: Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) and music-induced frisson are sensory-affective phenomena characterized by tingling, chills, and strong emotional responses. While existing literature extensively documents the physiological changes occurring during these experiences (e.g., heart rate reduction, skin conductance increases, dopaminergic activation), there is a significant gap in understanding baseline physiological predispositions. It remains unclear whether an individual's resting autonomic state predicts their susceptibility to these phenomena.

Objective: To investigate whether baseline autonomic flexibility, primarily indexed by Heart Rate Variability (HRV), and secondary cortical markers (resting EEG), are associated with subsequent susceptibility to ASMR and music-induced frisson. The study hypothesized that higher baseline autonomic flexibility would correlate with increased responsiveness.

2. Methodology

Study Design and Participants

• Design: Exploratory pilot study with a convenience sampling approach.
• Sample: 15 healthy volunteers were recruited. After excluding 5 participants due to significant artifacts in physiological recordings, the final analytic sample consisted of 10 participants (6 male, 4 female; mean age 33.2 years). The age distribution was bimodal (younger subgroup $n=7$, older subgroup $n=3$).
• Ethics: Conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Ethical approval was obtained retrospectively from the Cantonal Ethics Committee Zurich (KEK) in March 2026.

Experimental Paradigm

• Baseline Recording: A 5-minute resting period was recorded with eyes closed in a darkened room. Participants underwent simultaneous EEG (64-channel, 10–20 system) and ECG (bipolar wrist electrodes) acquisition.
• Stimuli: Participants were exposed to three types of stimuli in randomized order:
  1. ASMR Triggers: 10 excerpts (5 audio-only, 5 audiovisual) featuring whispering, soft repetitive sounds, and personal attention cues.
  2. Music (Frisson): 4 classical excerpts (Mozart, Richter, Delibes, Marcello) varying in tempo and emotional character.
  3. Control: A train sound.
• Procedure: Stimuli were presented in two blocks (auditory and audiovisual). Participants reported the occurrence of ASMR-typical sensations or frisson after each stimulus (or block for auditory ASMR).

Physiological Measures

• Primary Markers (ECG/HRV):
  • Heart Rate (HR)
  • Heart Rate Slope (rate of change)
  • Low-Frequency Power (LF: 0.04–0.15 Hz)
  • High-Frequency Power (HF: 0.15–0.4 Hz)
  • Normalized LF (LFnu)
  • Total HRV Power
• Secondary Markers (EEG):
  • Frontal Alpha Asymmetry (FAA)
  • Spectral parameters (alpha, beta, gamma).
• Preprocessing: Data were filtered (0.5–70 Hz), segmented, and cleaned using Independent Component Analysis (ICA) to remove artifacts.

Statistical Analysis

• Outcome Definition: "Response-positive" was defined as reporting ASMR or frisson. The primary outcome was the count of response-positive stimuli per participant.
• Methods: Pearson and Spearman correlations were used to assess associations between baseline physiology and responsiveness. Group comparisons (susceptible vs. non-susceptible) utilized independent-samples t-tests with Hedges' $g$ for effect sizes.
• Approach: All analyses were exploratory; no correction for multiple comparisons was applied.

3. Key Results

Correlation with Responsiveness

• HRV Findings: There was a strong, positive correlation between baseline HRV measures and the number of stimuli eliciting a response.
  • Total HRV Power: $r = 0.756$, $p = 0.011$.
  • Heart Rate Slope: $r = 0.751$, $p = 0.012$.
  • High-Frequency (HF) Power: $r = 0.672$, $p = 0.033$.
• EEG Findings:
  • Frontal Alpha Asymmetry (FAA): Showed a robust negative correlation with responsiveness ($\rho = -0.862$, $p = 0.001$), indicating that lower baseline FAA values predicted higher susceptibility.
  • Other EEG parameters were less consistent across analyses.

Group Differences (Susceptible vs. Non-Susceptible)

Participants who reported at least one experience (susceptible) exhibited a distinct physiological profile compared to non-susceptible participants:

• Higher baseline Total HRV power ($g = 0.45$).
• Higher HF power ($g = 0.62$).
• Higher Heart Rate Slope ($g = 0.94$).
• Lower Frontal Alpha Asymmetry ($g = -1.61$).

Stimulus-Specific Effects

• The positive association with Total HRV power was stable across diverse trigger categories, including Audio ASMR, Eating sounds, and Classical music (mean effect size $g = 1.89$).
• FAA showed a stimulus-specific negative effect primarily during the "Whispering" condition.

4. Key Contributions

1. Shift from Reaction to Predisposition: This study is among the first to move beyond analyzing physiological changes during ASMR/frisson to identifying baseline physiological predictors of susceptibility.
2. HRV as a Primary Marker: It establishes Total HRV Power as the most coherent physiological correlate of susceptibility to these sensory-affective phenomena, suggesting that individuals with higher autonomic flexibility are more prone to these experiences.
3. Cross-Modal Susceptibility: The findings suggest that baseline autonomic state predicts susceptibility to a shared class of sensory-affective experiences (both ASMR and frisson), rather than being limited to a single trigger type.
4. Secondary Cortical Insight: It identifies Frontal Alpha Asymmetry (FAA) as a potential, though less consistent, cortical marker, where lower asymmetry correlates with higher susceptibility.

5. Significance and Limitations

Significance:
The results support the hypothesis that susceptibility to ASMR and frisson is not solely determined by stimulus properties but is significantly influenced by the individual's pre-existing physiological state. Specifically, higher baseline autonomic flexibility (indexed by HRV) may facilitate the transition into the immersive, affectively engaged states required for these experiences. This provides a mechanistic framework for understanding interindividual differences in sensory-affective processing.

Limitations:

• Sample Size: The study is a small pilot ($n=10$), limiting statistical power and generalizability.
• Exploratory Nature: No correction for multiple comparisons was used; results are hypothesis-generating rather than confirmatory.
• Outcome Aggregation: ASMR and frisson were combined into a single outcome measure, which may obscure distinct mechanisms between the two phenomena.
• Self-Report: Susceptibility was based on subjective reporting, which can be influenced by individual interpretation thresholds.
• Selection Bias: The exclusion of 5 out of 15 participants due to artifacts may have introduced bias.

Future Directions:
The authors recommend larger, preregistered studies to replicate the HRV findings. Future work should separate ASMR and frisson analytically and potentially utilize HRV biofeedback to test causality (i.e., whether modulating HRV directly alters susceptibility).