The whole thing reminds me of Franz Anton Mesmer. The proposed way to induce ASMR is to listen to a whisphery voice or meaningless noises of haircuttting. If you do that you induce a light trance. Sometimes when you induce a light trance some muscle in the head will relax and that will produce a tickly feeling. If you however give specific suggestion that your subject will feel a tickly feeling in the head and the subject has decent hypnotic suggestibility they will feel the feeling every time. I don't see the big mystery or the need for a crude extra term like ASMR.

I've never heard of this before but reading the article reminded me of an experience I had in a Pentecostal setting. I was praying for the Holy Spirit to make me speak in tongues. I was very concentrated and prayed a chant over and over. I was lying in my bed and my chest started tingling. It was sort of like how your leg feels when it falls asleep. I also felt physical warmth and muscle relaxation, and lot of pleasure. The tingling spread all over my body and I became paralyzed. But it felt good so I didn't care. I re-induced it lots of times until I saw a Darren Brown video and concluded that my effect came from a placebo and God wasn't real.After I had been an atheist for a few months, I successfully re-induced it. But the novelty has worn-off and I don't do it anymore.