Exploring Neural Idiosyncrasies in Response to Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response Videos: Naturalistic Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Stress and Sensory Processing

Background: Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos have been increasingly popularized as accessible tools for stress relief. Despite widespread media coverage promoting their benefits, empirical research on the neural mechanisms underlying ASMR remains limited, particularly in general, unselected populations rather than self-identified ASMR responders. Objective: This study aimed to investigate whether ASMR videos, when viewed in a naturalistic context by a general population sample, elicit consistent neural synchrony in stress-related brain regions and whether individual differences in perceived stress predict variability in neural responses. Methods: The study included 72 young adults from South Korea. They participated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment in which they viewed 3 ASMR videos selected through both manual and computational content analysis to reflect commonly consumed ASMR content. Intersubject correlation analysis was used to quantify the degree to which participants exhibited shared temporal patterns of neural activity across 16 a priori regions of interest implicated in stress processing. Intersubject representational similarity analysis assessed whether pairwise similarity in self-reported stress levels predicted similarity in neural synchrony. Exploratory analyses examined differences across videos, the impact of familiarity and prior ASMR use, and comparisons with a Mukbang control video. Results: Intersubject correlation analysis demonstrated that ASMR videos elicited significant neural synchrony in several brain regions (P<.05), including the insula and amygdala, although this synchrony varied across videos. No significant associations were identified between perceived stress and neural synchrony after correction for multiple comparisons (all P>.05). Exploratory comparisons with a Mukbang control video revealed no significant differences in stress-related neural synchrony between ASMR and non-ASMR content (all P>.05). Additional exploratory analyses examining familiarity with the content and prior ASMR viewership also did not show significant effects (all P>.05). Uncorrected analyses suggested weak trends that indicated greater neural variability among participants with differing stress levels, but these findings are preliminary. Conclusions: The results do not provide conclusive evidence that ASMR videos consistently engage stress-related neural networks or that individual stress levels predict neural synchrony during ASMR video viewing. The findings highlight the substantial variability in ASMR engagement across content and individuals, and underscore the need for further research using multimodal physiological measures, larger samples, and stratified designs to identify which ASMR components and viewer characteristics are most relevant to potential stress-relief effects.