Frisson
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Frisson is a French term intended to convey the shiver or thrill of fright that can be strangely pleasurable, as when reading good horror fiction. Sometimes accompanied by the sensation of the hairs raising on the back of the neck. Note that this is not synonymous with fear which is a more powerful and visceral feeling. By extension, the term is used to denote an experience of intense excitement." --Sholem Stein "It has been shown in "Thrills in Response to Music and Other Stimuli" (1980) that some experiencing musical frisson report reduced excitement when under administration of naloxone (an opioid receptor antagonist), suggesting musical frisson gives rise to endogenous opioid peptides similar to other pleasurable experiences." --Sholem Stein |
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Frisson (French for 'shiver'), 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 or otherwise positively-valenced affective state and transient paresthesia (skin tingling or chills), sometimes along with piloerection (goose bumps) and mydriasis (pupil dilation). The sensation commonly occurs as a mildly to moderately pleasurable emotional response to music with skin tingling; piloerection and pupil dilation do not necessarily occur in all cases. The psychological component (i.e., the pleasurable feeling) and physiological components (i.e., parasthesia, 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 unique to each individual.
Frisson is of short duration, lasting only a few seconds. Typical stimuli include loud passages of music and passages—such as appoggiaturas and sudden modulation—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.
It has been shown in "Thrills in Response to Music and Other Stimuli" (1980) that some experiencing musical frisson report reduced excitement when under administration 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.
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Causes
Violations of musical expectancy
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). Activation of the ANS has a consistent strong correlation with frisson, as one study showed that an opioid antagonist could block frisson from music.
Emotional contagion
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.
Neural substrates
Experimental studies have also shown that tingling during frisson is accompanied by increased electrodermal activity (skin conductance) – which is mediated via the activation of the sympathetic nervous system – and that the intensity of tingling is positively correlated with the magnitude of sympathetic activation. Frisson is also associated with piloerection, enlarged pupil diameter, and physiological arousal, all of which are mediated by activation of the sympathetic nervous system.
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.
The frisson and the aesthetics of André Breton
We find in this description by André Breton the notion of the British sublime sensibility and the contemporary body genre:
- J'avoue sans la moindre confusion mon insensibilité profonde en présence des spectacles naturels et des oeuvres d'art qui, d'emblée, ne me procurent pas un trouble physique caracterisé par la sensation d'une aigrette de vent aux tempes susceptible d'entraîner un véritable frisson. Je n’ai jamais pu m’empêcher d’établir une relation entre cette sensation et celle du plaisir érotique et ne découvre entre elles que des différences de degré.
- I acknowledge without least confusion my major insensitivity in the presence of natural spectacles and of works of art which, from the start, do not get to me a physical disorder characterized by the feeling of a brush of wind to the temples likely to involve a true shiver. I never could prevent me from establishing a relation between this feeling and that of the erotic pleasure and discover between them only a difference in degree.
Namesakes
See also
- Art and emotion
- Aesthetic chills
- Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR)
- Cold chill
- Music euphoria
- Goose bumps
