From Luce Gilmore, Cambridge, UK
Michael Marshall discusses the “brain tingles” of autonomous sensory meridian response or ASMR (3 November, p 35). It seems these were what Vita Sackville-West, lover of her fellow-writer Virginia Woolf, had in mind in her 1950 radio talk “Walking through leaves”. As well as the sensation of the title, she mentioned the silky glide of a filing-cabinet drawer with roller bearings and putting on a freshly ironed skirt.
She also mentioned sensations that have the opposite effect, such as the nasty feel of treading on granulated sugar on a tiled floor.
