Melina Delanghe is a graduate student at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Brussels, Belgium. She is pursuing her Master’s Degree in psychology in the Department of Biological & Cognitive Psychology.
For her Master’s Thesis, she decided to do an ASMR research project with Dr. Elke Van Hoof as her faculty advisor.
She investigated the ability of ASMR videos to affect the heart rates of individuals diagnosed as Highly Sensitive Persons and also in a control group.
In 2016, I posted an article that began, “Filmmaker begins production of the ASMR-inspired movie.”
Good news. The movie is done and available for all to view.
The movie was created by Mike Reed who lives in Denmead, UK. Mike also creates ASMR videos for his YouTube channel, “ASMR Show”
The working title of his movie was, “P.A.I.N.” and is now released as “3AMASMR” or you can think of the title as “3 am ASMR.”
I’ve created a new page for the website titled, “Health Benefits of ASMR.”
The page has a list of conditions which may be improved by experiencing ASMR. Each condition includes supporting resources such as; published research, ongoing research, testimonials, and supportive articles.
Unfortunately, it will take a lot more research, especially clinical studies, before the potential clinical application of ASMR will be understood. This new page just highlights some of the initial support that will hopefully assist and inspire other researchers and clinicians to do more studies.
If ASMR has helped you somehow, you can share your experience at the Voices of ASMR project and it will automatically be included to this new page.
If you know of a resource which highlights how ASMR has helped someone, then please send a link to asmruniversity@gmail.com and I’ll add it the page.
A current list of the potential health benefits of ASMR (with links to supporting resources) is below.
I have had the page “ASMR Resources” on my website for a while, but it only includes English language resources.
So I decided to also create, “ASMR Resources (non-English)” for all other languages.
This new page should be helpful to someone looking to learn about ASMR who is not fluent in, comfortable with, or able to read English.
Visitors to the page will find links to non-English websites, articles, audio files, and videos about ASMR in 15 different languages. I will continue to add more languages and resources.
A current list of the 15 languages (with links to the resources) is below.
In this podcast episode, you will hear participants in the Voices of ASMR project explain the following about their ASMR experiences:
Subscribe to the ASMR University Podcast to hear all of the past and future episodes or listen to this one episode right here:
Will Koziey-Kronas is an undergraduate student majoring in Professional Writing at the University of Toronto in Canada.
For his course, Introduction to Journalistic Investigations, he was assigned to write a profile piece.
He chose to profile ASMR through the experiences of an ASMR artist. Will explains why,
“People who aren’t familiar with ASMR are usually fascinated by it when their introduced for the first time. I figured a piece about an ASMR creator, written as an introduction to ASMR, would be very compelling.”
A December 14, 2017 application from Apple to the US patent Office shows Apple’s interest to patent, “a digital assistant that is capable of detecting a whispered speech input and providing a whispered speech response.”
Why would you want Siri to whisper to you?
One benefit could be to have a digital whisper bot in your pocket for ASMR sessions. Siri would not be the first virtual ASMR artist though, Amazon’s Alexa can already whisper (see link at bottom).
I don’t think ASMR sessions are Apple’s intent. Their proposed benefit is more about privacy and courtesy.
Sony joins Toyota, Pepsi, KFC, Dove, Ritz, IKEA, and Glenmorangie Whisky in utilizing ASMR videos for marketing.
The ASMR-style videos highlight the video recording quality of the Sony Xperia XZ1 phone. The full campaign and videos are posted on the website of Carphone Warehouse, the top independent mobile online retailer in the UK.
What prompted Carphone Warehouse and Sony to create ASMR videos to help promote the Xperia XZ1 phone?
Jake Gyllenhaal (actor in Brokeback Mountain, Donnie Darko, Nightcrawler) does a short interview with W Magazine which includes ASMR triggers.
He whispers about his day, plays with an old style camera, and twists bubble wrap. He also bangs a chisel into wood with a rubber mallet, which may not be so ASMR-inducing for many individuals.
On the YouTube channel, Miu Miu, several actors join forces to create individual and collaborative ASMR videos. The clips are less than a minute long and mostly involve whispering or quiet talking.
The Miu Miu team includes Sadie Sink (Stranger Things 2, Annie), Dakota Fanning (I am Sam, War of the Worlds, Charlotte’s Web), Elle Fanning (We Bought a Zoo, Maleficent), Julia Garner (Ozark, The Americans, We Are What We Are), and Chloë Sevigny (American Psycho, Big Love, American Horror Story).
Click the links below to view their ASMR videos:
Dr Agnieszka Janik McErlean is the lead author of the publication, “Assessing individual variation in personality and empathy traits in self-Reported Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response.”
At the time of the publication she was a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at James Cook University in Singapore. In January 2018, she will be a Senior Lecturer in the Dept of Psychology at Bath Spa University in the UK.
Dr Janik McErlean co-authored the paper with Dr Michael Banissy and the research was published March 30, 2017 in the journal Multisensory Research.
In my interview with Dr Janik McErlean she shares how she became interested in researching ASMR, the goals and methods of her study, the insights she uncovered about ASMR triggers, and her findings about the personality and empathy traits of ASMR responders.
ASMR University 