Physiological and Behavioral Responses Reveal 9-Month-Old Infants’ Sensitivity to Pleasant Touch

Fairhurst, Merle T.; Löken, Line; Großmann, Tobias

doi:10.1177/0956797614527114

Cited by 205 publications

(138 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Work has shown that the sensitivity for pleasant touch emerges early in human development (e.g., Bremner, Mareschal, Lloyd-Fox, & Spence, 2008;Fairhurst, Löken, & Grossman, 2014). Our study extends this line of work by demonstrating that infants also process the touch of others.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Embodied Simulation of Others Being Touched in 1-Year-Old Infants

Müller

Meinhardt

Paulus

2017

Developmental Neuropsychology

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Embodied Simulation of Others Being Touched in 1-Year-Old Infants

Müller

Meinhardt

Paulus

2017

Developmental Neuropsychology

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“…This and related findings (for review and the so-called 'social touch' hypothesis see Morrison, Loken, & Olausson, 2010) suggests that this system may be specialized not only for processing affective touch, but also specifically social affective touch. Crucially, a recent study found that nine month old infants are sensitive to the particular physical properties of affective touch: CT-optimal but not non-optimal velocities of tactile stimulation led to heart rate decelerations in the infants, possibly reflecting relaxation and increases in their behavioral engagement (gaze shifts and duration of looks) with the stroking stimulus (Fairhurst et al, 2014). Thus, this type of affective, social touch may be another example of a specific, embodied social behavior that can regulate homeostasis and influence the basic, feeling states of the infant.…”

Section: The Affectively Touched Self: Learning Bodily Pleasure and Pmentioning

confidence: 98%

Mentalizing homeostasis: The social origins of interoceptive inference

Fotopoulou

Tsakiris

2017

Neuropsychoanalysis

300

263

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Is the self already relational in its very bodily foundations? The question of whether our mental life is initially and primarily shaped by embodied dimensions of the individual or by interpersonal relations is debated in many fields, including psychology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and more recently, cognitive neuroscience. In this interdisciplinary target article, we put forward the radical claim that even some of the most minimal aspects of selfhood, namely the feeling qualities associated with being an embodied subject, are fundamentally shaped by embodied interactions with other people in early infancy and beyond. Such embodied interactions allow the developing organism to mentalize its homeostatic regulation. In other words, embodied interactions contribute directly to the building of mental models of the infant's physiological states, given the need to maintain such states within a given dynamic range despite internal or external perturbations.

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“…In human infants too, gentle stroking elicits greater positive emotions than static touch or handling associated with noninvasive medical procedures (Field, 1980). Indeed, a recent study reported specifically that CT optimal velocity touch reduced infants' heart rates to a significantly greater degree than faster or slower bouts of stroking (Fairhurst et al, 2014). Mirroring the effects of endogenously administered oxytocin (Leknes et al, 2013), social touch designed to optimally activate CTs elicited significantly greater pupillary dilation, indicative of attentional orienting, than Aβ targeted machine touch (Ellingsen et al, 2014).…”

Section: Are C-tactile Afferents the Sensory Nerves Mediating The Phymentioning

confidence: 99%

C-tactile afferents: Cutaneous mediators of oxytocin release during affiliative tactile interactions?

et al. 2017

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Low intensity, non-noxious, stimulation of cutaneous somatosensory nerves has been shown to trigger oxytocin release and is associated with increased social motivation, plus reduced physiological and behavioural reactivity to stressors. However, to date, little attention has been paid to the specific nature of the mechanosensory nerves which mediate these effects. In recent years, the neuroscientific study of human skin nerves (microneurography studies on single peripheral nerve fibres) has led to the identification and characterisation of a class of touch sensitive nerve fibres named C-Tactile afferents. Neither itch nor pain receptive, these unmyelinated, low threshold mechanoreceptors, found only in hairy skin, respond optimally to low force/velocity stroking touch. Notably, the speed of stroking which c-tactile afferents fire most strongly to is also that which people perceive to be most pleasant. The social touch hypothesis posits that this system of nerves has evolved in mammals to signal the rewarding value of physical contact in nurturing and social interactions. In support of this hypothesis, in this paper we review the evidence that cutaneous stimulation directly targeted to optimally activate c-tactile afferents reduces physiological arousal, carries a positive affective value and, under healthy conditions, inhibits responses to painful stimuli. These effects mirror those, we also review, which have been reported following endogenous release and exogenous administration of oxytocin. Taken together this evidence suggests c-tactile afferent stimulation may mediate oxytocin release during affiliative tactile interactions.

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Physiological and Behavioral Responses Reveal 9-Month-Old Infants’ Sensitivity to Pleasant Touch

Cited by 205 publications

References 32 publications

Embodied Simulation of Others Being Touched in 1-Year-Old Infants

Embodied Simulation of Others Being Touched in 1-Year-Old Infants

Mentalizing homeostasis: The social origins of interoceptive inference

C-tactile afferents: Cutaneous mediators of oxytocin release during affiliative tactile interactions?

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