Frisson has colloquial terminology regarding how people describe it, such as “shivers down your spine” or “the chills” but essentially, it’s the feeling that makes the hairs stand on the back of your neck. It primarily concerns arousal of the automatic nervous system. (ANS) ANS is activated usually because of a very high or low frequency, or rapidly changing sounds. These properties, as well as increased heart rate are often experienced with the onset of frisson.

¹The reason we experience frisson is still a philosophical debate which can be approached from perspectives of psychology and neuroscience.  (Cochrane, 2010.) Strong emotional experiences, ones that often elicit frisson take place in both the caudate nucleus, and the nucleus accumbens, which are parts of the brain which activate moments before and after an emotional peak. Patients that experienced frisson had increased blood flow to parts of the brain that were also activated by surrounding responses like food, sex, and addictive drugs. This suggests that once we experience frisson, we develop a craving for it, though that doesn’t explain why we experience that frisson in the first place.

“It is possible that the reason we develop such affinity for frisson-inducing music is that once we experience musical frisson, we develop a dopaminergic anticipation for its return, effectively becoming slightly addicted to the musical stimulus”

Though this journal can find out which parts of the brain are activated when people experience frisson from music, they can’t really understand why music would generate dopamine release in the first place because of it. ² David Huron argues that having multiple people experience frisson can form group mood synchronization, creating a better relationship between people hence having a better defence against other human groups, though the claim is unsupported with evidence.

After an extensive search for theories behind the experience of frisson, my search came up short, and there isn’t much information behind why frisson would ever be evolutionarily beneficial.

 ^{(1) by Lucas D. Harrison and Psyche Loui (2014) Thrills, Chills, Frissons, and Skin Orgasms: Toward an Integrative Model of Transcendent Psychophysiological Moments in Music}

^{(2) DAVID HURON (2001)  : Is Music an Evolutionary Adaptation? School of Music, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA}