A touching Sight: EEG/ERP correlates for the vicarious processing of affectionate touch

Abstract

Observers can simulate aspects of other people's tactile experiences. We asked whether they do so when faced with full-body social interactions, whether emerging representations go beyond basic sensorimotor mirroring, and whether they depend on processing goals and inclinations. In an EEG/ERP study, we presented line-drawn, dyadic interactions with and without affectionate touch. In an explicit and an implicit task, participants categorized images into touch vs no-touch and same vs opposite sex interactions, respectively. Modulations of central Rolandic rhythms implied that affectionate touch displays engaged sensorimotor mechanisms. Additionally, the late positive potential (LPP) being larger for images with as compared to without touch pointed to an involvement of higher order socio-affective mechanisms. Task and sex modulated touch perception. Sensorimotor responding, indexed by Rolandic rhythms, was fairly independent of the task but appeared less effortful in women than in men. Touch induced socio-affective responding, indexed by the LPP, declined from explicit to implicit processing in women and disappeared in men. In sum, this study provides first evidence that vicarious touch from full-body social interactions entails shared sensorimotor as well as socio-affective experiences. Yet, mental representations of touch at a socio-affective level are more likely when touch is goal relevant and observers are female. Together, these results outline the conditions under which touch in visual media may be usefully employed to socially engage observers.

Attentional conditions differentially affect early, intermediate and late neural responses to fearful and neutral faces

“…Our sample contained mostly female participants, and generalizing our findings to males should be taken with care since previous work has suggested sex differences with respect to the processing of emotional information (for a review, see Kret and De Gelder, 2012 ). Regarding ERPs, women exhibit larger mid-latency modulations for emotional vocalizations ( Schirmer et al., 2019 ) and larger LPP responses to images conveying interpersonal touch in implicit tasks ( Schirmer and McGlone, 2019 ) and show task-modulated N170 emotion effects ( Valdés-Conroy et al., 2014 ). Furthermore, each emotional expression was repeated 6 times and each identity even 12 times in total.…”

Midfrontal theta oscillation encodes haptic delay

“…Neurohaptics is an emerging field that strives to understand the complex neural representations provoked in response to touch stimulation 9 . Neural imaging techniques such as fMRI and EEG offer the potential to examine brain activities associated with haptic delay to provide objective, real-time assessment of the haptic delay 9 , 10 . Compared to other neural imaging techniques such as fMRI, EEG is preferable due to the compatibility with electric devices, relatively low cost, and the ability to measure brain responses with high temporal resolution 9 .…”

Vocal threat enhances visual perception as a function of attention and sex

“…We determined our sample size a priori based on previous research reporting sex differences and counterbalancing needs associated with the paradigm (Schirmer et al , 2013a, 2018; Schirmer and McGlone, 2018). Sample size, basic methodology and study hypotheses were pre-registered at the Open Science Framework and can be inspected here: https://osf.io/ur6fk/?view_only=bea9c744d0824b6aaea0ad08588a6b04.…”