How ASMR Rewires the Brain for Calm, Sleep, and Stress Relief, with Dr. Craig Richard

We did a brain scan study and we did find there are some specific regions of the brain which are very activated when someone's experiencing ASMR. Hey everyone, it's Rosie here. Welcome back to "Radio Headspace." So have you ever felt that strange tingling sensation when somebody whispers or when you hear the sound of pages turning, it's called ASMR. And for millions of people, it's become a way to relax and fall asleep. But what's actually happening in the brain when we experience ASMR? To help answer that, I'm joined today by Dr. Craig Richard. He spent years studying the science behind ASMR. And I have to say it's fascinating. I really hope you enjoy this conversation. Thank you Dr. Richard for being on "Radio Headspace." I'm so excited to have this conversation with you today. If you don't mind sharing with us and our listeners who you are and what you do. Craig Richard, I'm a professor of physiology at Shenandoah University in Virginia. I'm the founder of the website, asmruniversity.com. I wrote a book about ASMR called "Brain Tingles," and I'm host of the calming podcast, "Calm History." Tell us how you got into this. What made you go into studying ASMR? Uh-hmm. I can give you the exact year. It was in 2013, I was in my kitchen, listening to a podcast, and the episode in that podcast was about autonomous sensory meridian response. And that sounded like something physiological, but I'm a physiologist, and I'd never heard that term before. And I was about to delete the episode when they mention that people who experience ASMR tend to feel super relaxed by Bob Ross. And that's when my eyes lit up. I'm like, "Oh my goodness." I remember being a kid coming home from school, turning on Bob Ross, putting a pillow on the floor, and then just getting, like, passed out, like just super relaxed and falling asleep halfway through before he was done with the painting. And as they gave more examples in this podcast, I was like, "Okay, whatever this is, I experienced it." And when I finished listening to the episode, my thought was, "Ah, I can't wait to read about the science behind this." And in 2013, there was not a single published study. And that's when I said, all right, time for me as a scientist to kind of focus on this because I do believe in it, I experience it. And so that's when I launched asmruniversity.com. That's when I started doing collaboration research studies with other individuals and started collecting data about this. And it's just put me on this journey of studying ASMR. Well, I mean, you kicked us off right at the perfect spot. Give the audience a description of what ASMR is. Yeah, it's kind of confusing. The letters stand for autonomous sensory meridian response. It's a deeply relaxing feeling that may also have these like brain tingles that travels down your scalp in...