Frisson, also known as aesthetic chills, musical chills, and colloquially as a skin orgasm, is a psychophysiological response to rewarding auditory and/or visual stimuli that induces a pleasurable affective state and transient paresthesia (skin tingling or chills), sometimes along with piloerection (goose bumps) and mydriasis (pupil dilation).
Frisson is of short duration, lasting only a few seconds. Typical stimuli include loud passages of music and passages that violate some level of musical expectation. During a frisson, a sensation of chills or tingling 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.
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.
Rhythmic, harmonic, and/or melodic violations of a person’s explicit or implicit expectations are associated with musical frisson as a prerequisite. Loud, very high or low frequency, or quickly varying sounds (unexpected harmonies, moments of modulations, melodic appoggiaturas) has been shown to arouse the autonomic nervous system (ANS).
Another explanation for the cause of frisson is emotional contagion, which proposes that perceived emotional intensity prompts frisson in a similar way to how a perceived sad ballad can allow a listener to feel sad themselves as an empathetic response.
Neuroimaging studies have found that the intensity of tingling is positively correlated with the magnitude of brain activity in specific regions of the reward system, including the nucleus accumbens, orbitofrontal cortex, and insular cortex. All three of these brain structures are known to contain a hedonic hotspot, a region of the brain that is responsible for producing pleasure cognition. Since music-induced euphoria can occur without the sensation of tingling or piloerection, the authors of one review hypothesized that the emotional response to music during a frisson evokes a sympathetic response that is experienced as a tingling sensation.
From Macmillan Dictionary:
The word frisson comes from the Latin word ‘frigere’ meaning ‘to be cold’. Its use to describe an intense emotional feeling comes more closely from the French word ‘frisson’, which means ‘fever; thrill’. In English, frisson was first used around 1777, although it did not become widely used until a century later.
Further Reading:
- Thrills, chills, frissons, and skin orgasms: toward an integrative model of transcendent psychophysiological experiences in music
- Frisson Subreddit
Clinical Listening List:
- The first two minutes and 11 seconds of J.S. Bach’s “St. John’s Passion: Part 1—Herr, unser Herrscher”
- The first two minutes and 18 seconds of “Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1: II”
- The first 53 seconds of Air Supply’s “Making Love Out of Nothing at All”
- The first three minutes and 21 seconds of Vangelis’ “Mythodea: Movement 6”
- The first two minutes of Hans Zimmer’s “Oogway Ascends”
Personal Listening List:
- Ours - Distorted Lullabies - Fallen Souls
- Damien Rice - O - I Remember
- Onelinedrawing - The Volunteers - We Had a Deal
- The Get-Up Kids - Something to Write Home About - I'll Catch You
- Jeff Buckley - Grace - Hallelujah
- Yngwie Malmsteen - Rising Force - Black Star
- In Flames - The Jester Race - Artifacts of the Black Rain (but really most of The Jester Race album)
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - The Magic Flute - Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen
ed note: pronounced like "free-sawn"
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