During the summer period I worked an a very special project with psychologist Barbara Montagne from GGZ Centraal and movie maker Lieza Röben. The project is called “Huidhonger: Op Slot – portretten uit de psychiatrie”. We made short films in which we show how psychiatric patients experienced the lockdown and social distancing regulations related to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are also working on a quantitative and qualitative research project focusing on this issue.

The three short movies are covered nicely here (in Dutch) and can be found here (with English subtitles): Jasper; Marli; Anne.

Feel free to share them!

For De Universiteit van Nederland i recorded a podcast on touch and touch deprivation

Listen to it here

De Kennis van Nu made an episode about touch deprivation in times of social deprivation

They interviewed a few colleagues and myself, you can watch it here

A nice interview about loneliness in a lockdown society was published by Noord Hollands Niews

Read/watch it here

At Utrecht University we are currently running a study that investigates the effects of social distancing regulations on wellbeing and touch deprivation.

In several media this is a popular topic, see for example here. We aim to add insights from science to what is being said and written.

If you have 15 minutes to spare please participate here!

Sharing the link to the study is much appreciated, it is available in English, Dutch, German and Italian: http://tiny.cc/touch2020

On the verge of 2019 our paper on eye tracking and ASMR was published in Plos One.

You can read it here

In this paper we show that individuals who have ASMR experiences show a change in pupil size while watching ASMR movie clips, this change in pupil size was not found in participants who did not report ASMR experiences. This study adds nicely to the growing body of literature on physical changes associated with ASMR

Over the past year I did a series of ASMR experiments, of which the first one is now published In Perception.

The paper is on ASMR and sensory suggestibility, you can read it here.

A few weeks ago I gave a lecture for Universiteit van Nederland, it is now online and you can watch it here

Today Studium Generale of Eindhoven University organized a lunch meeting in which they interviewed me about ASMR.

There were many interesting questions from the audience and it was possible to participate in one of my ASMR experiments.

Yesterday the “5 Uur Live” show on the Dutch TV channel RTL 4 discussed ASMR and showed a short interview with me.

You can watch it here.