The Effect of Audio Trigger’s Frequency on Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response

Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is an experience-dependent sensation in response to audio and audio–visual triggers. The acoustical characteristics of audio trigger have been speculated to be in connection with ASMR. To explore the effect of audio trigger’s frequency on ASMR and then to discover ASMR’s mechanism, the ASMR phenomenon under random-frequency audio, high-frequency audio, low-frequency audio, original audio, white-noise and rest were analyzed by EEG. The differential entropy and power spectral density were applied to quantitative analysis. The results suggest the audio’s frequency can modulate the brain activities on <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">θ</i>, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">α</i>, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">β</i>, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">γ</i>, and high <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">γ</i> frequencies. Moreover, ASMR responder and nonresponder may be more sensitive to low-frequency audio and white-noise by suppressing brain activities of central areas in <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">γ</i> and high <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">γ</i> frequencies. Further, for ASMR responders, ASMR evoked by low-frequency audio trigger may involve more attentional selection or semantic processing and may not alter the brain functions in information processing and execution.