Hi to all 👋🏼
I learned something new today, and I found it very interesting, so thought I would share it with everyone. I am emotionally numb and suffer from dissociative disorder and I always say, that the only time I feel anything is when I’m listening to music and I quite often get goosebumps from head to toe! I didn’t know it had a name but now I know it’s called, FRISSON. I hope you find it useful and as interesting as I thought it was.
Frisson; French for ("shiver"), also known as aesthetic chills or psychogenic shivers, is a psychophysiological response to rewarding stimuli (including music, films, stories, people, photos, and rituals) that often induces a pleasurable or otherwise u and transient pares thesis (skin tingling or chills), sometimes along with piloerection (goose bumps) and mydriasis (pupil dilation). The sensation can occur as a mildly to moderately pleasurable emotional response to music with skin tingling.
The psychological component (i.e., the pleasurable feeling) and physiological components (i.e., paresthesia, piloerection, and pupil dilation) of the response are mediated by the reward system and sympathetic nervous system, respectively. The stimuli that produce this response are specific to each individual. Frisson is of short duration, lasting only a few seconds.
Typical stimuli include loud passages of music and passages—such as appoggiatura and sudden modulation—that violate some level of musical expectation. While frisson is usually known for being evoked by experiences with music, the phenomenon can additionally be triggered with poetry, videos, beauty in nature or art, eloquent speeches, the practice of science (mainly physics and mathematics), and can also be triggered on command by some people without any external stimuli. During a frisson, a sensation of chills or tingling is felt on the skin of the lower back, shoulders, neck, and/or arms. The sensation of chills is sometimes experienced as a series of 'waves' moving up the back in rapid succession and commonly described as "shivers up the spine.” Hair follicles may also undergo piloerection.
It has been shown that some experiencing musical frisson report reduced measures of naloxone (an opioid receptor antagonist), suggesting musical frisson gives rise to endogenous opioid peptides similar to other pleasurable experiences. Frisson may be enhanced by the amplitude of the music and the temperature of the environment. Cool listening rooms and cinemas may enhance the experience.
Experiencing musical frisson is associated with increased connectivity between the sections of the brain responsible for processing auditory information (specifically the anterior insula) and for reward processing: in other words, the greater the volume of white matter connectivity between those areas of the brain, the more likely an individual is to experience chills. Experiencing musical frisson is also associated with openness to experience.
Be kind to yourself. Stay safe and take care 🤗
P.
