Why some people get "skin orgasms" from listening to music

[FieldTheory]

First 30s are pretty awesome, yeah. Similar:

[FieldTheory]

For reference:

[Hanglyman]

Yeah, I’m a little confused… after reading about ASMR for a long while and hearing about what it supposedly feels like, I concluded that I feel something a little similar, only when listening to climactic moments of great music instead of random noises and whispering. Then this article shows up, and it sounds almost exactly like ASMR except… for great music and stuff. So are they related? The same thing? Totally different, and they just sound similar?

Other triggers are being touched on the neck and, um… well, as a friend crudely put it, “piss shivers”, like, getting a shivery sensation while urinating. I had no idea what he was even talking about, but then realized that I do it pretty much all the time, and had never noticed until it was pointed out to me. Weird.

[Jorpho]

According to this ancient Cracked article, “piss shivers” are believed to be a temperature equalization thing. Can’t say I’ve ever seen it discussed anywhere else.

[Trogdor]

I get that at a couple of spots in Mr. Mister’s “Broken Wings”. When the “sizzle” sound comes in, and during the “choral voices” (synthesizer?). Every time I hear it - still happens after 30 years.

[sockdoll]

I definitely experience chills, and other ASM responses. I found this opposing view online…

[anon68952647]

[jerwin]

WRONG WRONG WRONG.

and I’ve got the youtube video to prove it

So there!

[TailOfTruth]

It’s funny, I definitely experience these whole body shivers sometimes while listening to a piece of music that really moves me… but I have always associated them with awe, like a physical experience of it. I also get these same kind of “skin orgasims” when I realize something really amazing, make a discovery that is new and unique to me, finish a piece of art that turns out better than I thought, or sometimes when I am lucky enough to get far away from civilization even just looking up at the sky.

I actually created a topic on this a little while back where I was trying to describe the way watching a video from Vsauce (easily one of my favorite youtube channels) made me feel psychologically and physiologically.

Brain weed and the science of 'Awe'

I don’t know how many of you already watch Vsauce but this new episode really left me with more “awe” than usual, to the extent where I actually felt… high (Dopamine maybe?). Watch this all the way through, the experience really will leave you feeling more than a little in awe, and maybe even drugged, who knows? EDIT: Does “awe” cause your body to release endorphins? It seems like that might be a thing. Is that a thing? Is it the music, the visuals? What is it that your body brain reacts to? …

So I wonder if this is a different thing than awe, but one that activates the exact same physiological response as awe, or if it is really just “awe” (or ‘wonder’?), which seems to be a very poorly understood human mental… and physical, state.

This video specifically… just wow. Left me with serious frisson.

Messages For The Future

[thaumatechnicia]

Jeepers, you may be right - though I never noticed that there’s a ‘z’ in the word. Maybe it’s the double-s I’m pronouncing wrong?

If so, does that mean that a ‘z’ is best pronounced like a double-s? Frossen yoghurt, anyone?

[Synesthesia]

Yes! Same here. I’ts been a while since i got frisson from music; maybe my ecstasy years got i?. Space stuff gets me every time, though.

[hhype]

I do hate everyone referring to every feeling as orgasms, this frisson thing and ASMR. Either your frisson and ASMR is tuned way up or your orgasms are tuned way down. But from a marketing standpoint I completely understand. Perhaps we should redefine marketing as the science of differentiating hyperbolic descriptions.

[anon27822705]

Oddly enough I initially skipped this article/post thinking this was some rare real orgasm like skin thing. Nope just goosebumps from music. And I thought everyone got that from time to time.

[chgoliz]

From the online genius you found:

Music is great and all but doesn’t garner a physical response from my body. Probably something for lesser minds.

Someone didn’t RTFA to learn when the chills are MORE likely:

@frauenfelder

These findings, recently published in the journal Psychology of Music, indicate that those who intellectually immerse themselves in music (rather than just letting it flow over them) might experience frisson more often and more intensely than others.

The guy (and yeah, let’s face it, this was a guy) just outed himself as a “lesser mind”.

[chgoliz]

I think his voice is part of it.

[manybellsdown]

I get it from this every time, especially at 1:31. And pretty much every time Leslie croons "death doesn’t discriminate …"

[robertpthompson]

Forget “frisson”, the correct medical term is “scoobie”.

[jerwin]

Honestly, I thought it was one of these videos

[Hypnosifl]

For more music with this effect, I’d recommend David Whitacre’s “When David Heard”, which actually made me cry when I first listened to it. The lyrics are a repetition of a simple verse from the King James Bible: “When David heard that Absalom was slain he went up into his chamber over the gate and wept, my son, my son, O Absalom my son, would God I had died for thee!” Hard to describe the effect, but somehow repetition of the words by the chorus give the sense of taking this particular story and turning it into a piece about the universal experience of loss, sad but also beautiful.

[Hypnosifl]

@TailOfTruth

So I wonder if this is a different thing than awe, but one that activates the exact same physiological response as awe, or if it is really just “awe” (or ‘wonder’?), which seems to be a very poorly understood human mental… and physical, state.

It seems plausible that they’re related in some way if not quite identical…the type of physical response to awe I think you’re talking about (feeling of spreading warmth, maybe a lump in the throat if it’s something morally inspiring) is sometimes referred to as “elevation” by psychologists, see this boingboing post with some links.