Social touch — a tool rather than a signal

2022 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 101100
Author(s):  
Annett Schirmer ◽  
Ilona Croy ◽  
Stefan R Schweinberger
Keyword(s):  
Social Touch

scholarly journals Biopsychosocial intersections of social/affective touch and psychiatry: Implications of ‘touch hunger’ during COVID-19

2021 ◽  
pp. 002076402199748
Author(s):  
Debanjan Banerjee ◽  
Velmarini Vasquez ◽  
Marisin Pecchio ◽  
Muralidhar L Hegde ◽  
Rao Ks Jagannatha ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Insular Cortex ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Sexual Intimacy ◽  
Personal Factors ◽  
Affective Touch ◽  
Social Touch ◽  
Travel Restrictions ◽  
Periaqueductal Grey Area

Background: Humans are neurobiologically wired for touch receptivity. Social touch is a common and mutual way of expressing affection, care, and intimacy. From an evolutionary perspective, affiliative and affectionate touch are considered necessary for social and cognitive development throughout life-stages and across species. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic as a public health threat has mandated social distancing as a measure to contain the global outbreak. Travel restrictions, lockdown, and quarantine have led to separation and segregation, giving rise to social touch deprivation that might have adverse biopsychosocial consequences. Methods: Affective touch has rarely been discussed within the purview of social psychiatry. We attempted to review the neurobiological, social, and behavioural correlates of social and sexual touch, as well as the neurophysiological models involved. Results: The unmyelinated peripheral C-fibre afferents projecting to insular cortex and somatosensory areas form the prime pathway for affective touch. ‘Top-down’ modulation via the periaqueductal grey area, rostroventral medulla and sub-cortical structures, and ‘Bottom-up’ approach via the dorsal horn of the spine form the two theoretical models of ‘social touch’ system. The mu - opioid receptor (MOR) implicated in the Brain Opioid Theory of Social Attachment (BOTSA) and social neuropeptides like oxytocin and vasopressin are the primary neurochemical substrates involved. Sexual intimacy involves other neurotransmitters, with increased oxytocin activity in the limbic structures, Nucleus Accumbens, Anterior Cingulate, and Prefrontal Cortex. The discrimination and amalgamation of touch senses, their affiliative value and emotional valence in humans are based on a complex interplay between psychobiological, environmental, and personal factors. Conclusion: The neurobehavioral and emotional effects of ‘touch hunger’ and strategies to mitigate it during COVID-19 are discussed in the context of psychoneuroimmunity and stress.

Gender patterns in social touch: The impact of setting and age.

1990 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 634-643 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda Major ◽  
Anne Marie Schmidlin ◽  
Lynne Williams
Keyword(s):  
Social Touch ◽  
Gender Patterns ◽  
The Impact

scholarly journals Social Touch Gesture Recognition Using Convolutional Neural Network

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saad Albawi ◽  
Oguz Bayat ◽  
Saad Al-Azawi ◽  
Osman N. Ucan
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Convolutional Neural Network ◽  
Gesture Recognition ◽  
Classification Accuracy ◽  
Recognition System ◽  
Human Robot Interaction ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Social Touch ◽  
Minimum Number ◽  
Original Frame

Recently, social touch gesture recognition has been considered an important topic for touch modality, which can lead to highly efficient and realistic human-robot interaction. In this paper, a deep convolutional neural network is selected to implement a social touch recognition system for raw input samples (sensor data) only. The touch gesture recognition is performed using a dataset previously measured with numerous subjects that perform varying social gestures. This dataset is dubbed as the corpus of social touch, where touch was performed on a mannequin arm. A leave-one-subject-out cross-validation method is used to evaluate system performance. The proposed method can recognize gestures in nearly real time after acquiring a minimum number of frames (the average range of frame length was from 0.2% to 4.19% from the original frame lengths) with a classification accuracy of 63.7%. The achieved classification accuracy is competitive in terms of the performance of existing algorithms. Furthermore, the proposed system outperforms other classification algorithms in terms of classification ratio and touch recognition time without data preprocessing for the same dataset.

scholarly journals Social Touch in Human–Computer Interaction

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan B. F. van Erp ◽  
Alexander Toet
Keyword(s):  
Social Touch ◽  
Computer Interaction

scholarly journals Dorsal raphe oxytocin receptors regulate the neurobehavioral consequences of social touch

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Z.A. Grieb ◽  
E.G. Ford ◽  
F.P. Manfredsson ◽  
J.S. Lonstein
Keyword(s):  
Cortical Plasticity ◽  
Coping Behavior ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Dorsal Raphe ◽  
Social Touch ◽  
Oxytocin Receptors ◽  
Tactile Cues ◽  
Group Members ◽  
New Mother ◽  
Dorsal Raphé

SummaryProsocial interactions are essential for group-living animals and are regulated by tactile cues shared among the group members. Neurobiological mechanisms through which social touch influences prosociality and related affective behaviors are relatively unknown. Using the evolutionarily ancient mother-young dyad as a model, we hypothesized that neurobehavioral consequences of social touch involves an interaction between central oxytocin (released during social touch) and serotonin (regulating affect and neuroplasticity). New mother rats showed upregulation of numerous aspects of the oxytocin system in the midbrain dorsal raphe (DR; source of forebrain serotonin) compared to non-maternal females. Preventing this upregulation by OTR knockdown in the maternal DR elicited infanticide, reduced nursing, increased aggression, and decreased active coping behavior. OTR knockdown also decreased serotonin-immunoreactive fibers, and increased neuroplasticity-restricting perineuronal nets, in the primary somatosensory cortex. Thus, oxytocin signaling in the DR regulates mechanisms involved in serotonin-induced cortical plasticity, which refines the tactile processing underlying prosocial behaviors.

scholarly journals Vicarious ratings of social touch the effect of age and autistic traits

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Connor J. Haggarty ◽  
David J. Moore ◽  
Paula D. Trotter ◽  
Rachel Hagan ◽  
Francis P. McGlone ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Similar Pattern ◽  
Autistic Traits ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Cognitive Factors ◽  
Autism Spectrum Conditions ◽  
Autism Diagnosis ◽  
Social Touch ◽  
Parental Reports ◽  
Effect Of Age

AbstractTactile sensitivities are common in Autism Spectrum Conditions (autism). Psychophysically, slow, gentle stroking touch is typically rated as more pleasant than faster or slower touch. Vicarious ratings of social touch results in a similar pattern of velocity dependent hedonic ratings as directly felt touch. Here we investigated whether adults and children’s vicarious ratings vary according to autism diagnosis and self-reported autistic traits. Adults’ scoring high on the AQ rated stroking touch on the palm as less pleasant than a Low AQ group. However, in contrast to our hypothesis, we did not find any effect of autism diagnosis on children’s touch ratings despite parental reports highlighting significant somatosensory sensitivities. These results are discussed in terms of underpinning sensory and cognitive factors.

Don't touch me! autistic traits modulate early and late ERP components during visual perception of social touch

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 1141-1154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leehe Peled-Avron ◽  
Simone G. Shamay-Tsoory
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Autistic Traits ◽  
Social Touch
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