FocusZen® Code Uses ASMR Sounds Whose Effects on the Human Body Have Been Scientifically Documented. Crystalline Focus May “Smooth” Extreme Emotional Responses.

A decrease in heart rate occurring at the same time as an increase in physiological arousal. Sounds contradictory? That is exactly the kind of response scientists observed while studying ASMR. Elements belonging to the same class of auditory stimuli have been deliberately incorporated into selected FocusZen® Code – Crystalline Focus tracks. Not to create relaxation music. They were used as part of a sound architecture designed around the regulation of arousal: reducing excessive spikes without completely switching off activation.

This is where the term we use in relation to Crystalline Focus comes in: “smoothing” extreme emotional responses.

It does not mean removing anger, stress or frustration. The emotion remains. The idea is to potentially reduce the intensity of the reaction by modulating the arousal accompanying it — shifting the body from a very high level of reactivity towards a more regulated state. Crystalline Focus was not designed to switch emotion off. It was designed to attempt to “smooth” its extreme peak. One of the reasons we began experimenting with this kind of sound architecture was research into ASMR.

ASMR — Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response — is commonly associated with whispering, tapping, rustling, subtle sounds or the characteristic tingling sensation some people experience. What interested us, however, was not the tingling itself, but a much simpler question: what happens to the human body during ASMR?

In 2015, Emma L. Barratt and Nick J. Davis published one of the first systematic scientific studies of the phenomenon in PeerJ: Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR): a flow-like mental state. Among the most commonly reported triggers were whispering, personal attention, crisp sounds and slow movements. Participants also commonly associated ASMR with relaxation and wellbeing.

That was interesting. But for FocusZen Code, something even more important appeared several years later.

In June 2018, Giulia Lara Poerio, Emma Blakey, Thomas J. Hostler and Theresa Veltri published More than a feeling: Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is characterized by reliable changes in affect and physiology in PLOS ONE. This time, the researchers did not simply ask people whether ASMR made them feel calmer.

They started measuring what the body was doing.

The laboratory part of the research involved 112 participants — 56 people who reported experiencing ASMR and 56 matched controls. During exposure to ASMR and control videos, researchers measured physiological responses including heart rate and skin conductance.

And this produced the result that became particularly interesting to us when developing Crystalline Focus: among people experiencing ASMR while watching ASMR videos, heart rate decreased while skin conductance increased.

The researchers highlighted the apparently opposing nature of these physiological responses — indicators associated with calming and arousal occurring together.

And this is where the real story of Crystalline Focus begins.

Calm — without switching off.

FocusZen Code was never intended to create another type of sleep music. Nor was the objective to produce another ASMR recording. Crystalline Focus retains music, rhythm, vocals, structure and energy, while selected tracks deliberately incorporate elements belonging to classes of stimuli associated with ASMR into a larger sound architecture.

The findings of Poerio and colleagues demonstrated something particularly interesting for this concept: physiological calming does not necessarily mean the complete absence of arousal.

This is where it connects with the FocusZen model:

Calm → Focus → Action.

We are not interested in a model of “arousal → shutdown”. We are interested in the possibility of reducing an excessive peak of arousal while retaining the activation required for continued focus and action.

That is why we use the word “smoothing”.

It is not about moving from “emotion” to “zero”.

It is about moving from an extreme peak towards a more regulated level.

Further research has allowed scientists to examine ASMR in greater detail. In 2017, Emma L. Barratt, Charles Spence and Nick J. Davis published Sensory determinants of the autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR): understanding the triggers. They investigated the sensory characteristics of ASMR triggers and demonstrated something important: ASMR is not a single “magic sound” or one particular frequency. It is a phenomenon associated with particular characteristics and configurations of sensory stimuli.

In 2018, Bryson C. Lochte, Sean A. Guillory, Craig A. H. Richard and William M. Kelley went further. In An fMRI investigation of the neural correlates underlying the autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), they used functional magnetic resonance imaging. During reported episodes of ASMR, activity was observed in several brain regions associated in different contexts with reward, emotion and sensory processing. The study was small, but it added another biological piece to the emerging picture of ASMR.

That same year, Beverley K. Fredborg, James M. Clark and Stephen D. Smith published Mindfulness and autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), investigating the relationship between ASMR and components of mindfulness. Their results identified differences between people who experience ASMR and controls in certain dimensions of mindfulness. This does not mean that ASMR and mindfulness are the same thing, nor that one causes the other. It does, however, provide another interesting connection between ASMR, attention and psychological state.

And this is precisely why ASMR became interesting to us as a tool within sound architecture, rather than as a separate genre.

Crystalline Focus is not created by taking an ASMR recording and simply adding music to it. Auditory elements are positioned inside a larger construction, coexisting with rhythm, vocals, bass and the remaining structure of the track. They may not be the most obvious thing the listener consciously notices.

They do not need to be.

They are part of the architecture.

So rather than describing Crystalline Focus as “ASMR music”, it is far more accurate to say:

ASMR is one of the tools used within the sound architecture of Crystalline Focus.

We are not interested in switching emotions off. Anger itself is not an error. Stress is not an error. Frustration is not an error. The problem can arise when the physiological arousal accompanying an emotion becomes so intense that it begins to dominate attention and behaviour.

That is why we talk about “smoothing” an extreme response rather than removing it.

Calm enough to remain able to focus. Smooth the peak instead of switching off the emotion. Leave space for the next action.

Calm. Focus. Action.

This is not intended to be a complete review of the scientific literature on ASMR. We are highlighting some of the key publications and research questions that interested us while developing the Crystalline Focus music experiment. Anyone interested in the subject can go further: search for the authors, read the original papers, examine their methodology and citations, and explore the research that followed.

Useful starting points include: Barratt & Davis (2015), Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR): a flow-like mental state, PeerJ 3:e851; Barratt, Spence & Davis (2017), Sensory determinants of the autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR): understanding the triggers, PeerJ 5:e3846; Poerio, Blakey, Hostler & Veltri (2018), More than a feeling: Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is characterized by reliable changes in affect and physiology, PLOS ONE 13(6):e0196645; Fredborg, Clark & Smith (2018), Mindfulness and autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), PeerJ 6:e5414; and Lochte, Guillory, Richard & Kelley (2018), An fMRI investigation of the neural correlates underlying the autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), BioImpacts 8(4):295–304.

The research cited here concerns ASMR and its components, rather than finished Crystalline Focus tracks.

We brought these elements together within a single sound architecture.