Touching moments: desire modulates the neural anticipation of active romantic caress

A romantic caress is a basic expression of affiliative behavior and a primary reinforcer. Given its inherent affective valence, its performance also would imply the prediction of reward values. For example, touching a person for whom one has strong passionate feelings likely is motivated by a strong desire for physical contact and associated with the anticipation of hedonic experiences. The present study aims at investigating how the anticipatory neural processes of active romantic caress are modulated by the intensity of the desire for affective contact as reflected by passionate feelings for the other. Functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning was performed in romantically involved partners using a paradigm that allowed to isolate the specific anticipatory representations of active romantic caress, compared with control caress, while testing for the relationship between neural activity and measures of feelings of passionate love for the other. The results demonstrated that right posterior insula activity in anticipation of romantic caress significantly co-varied with the intensity of desire for union with the other. This effect was independent of the sensory-affective properties of the performed touch, like its pleasantness. Furthermore, functional connectivity analysis showed that the same posterior insula cluster interacted with brain regions related to sensory-motor functions as well as to the processing and anticipation of reward. The findings provide insight on the neural substrate mediating between the desire for and the performance of romantic caress. In particular, we propose that anticipatory activity patterns in posterior insula may modulate subsequent sensory-affective processing of skin-to-skin contact

Reach Out and Touch Someone: Anticipatory Sensorimotor Processes of Active Interpersonal Touch

Anticipating the sensorimotor consequences of an action for both self and other is fundamental for action coordination when individuals socially interact. Somatosensation constitutes an elementary component of social cognition and sensorimotor prediction, but its functions in active social behavior remain unclear. We hypothesized that the somatosensory system contributes to social haptic behavior as evidenced by specific anticipatory activation patterns when touching an animate target (human hand) compared with an inanimate target (fake hand). fMRI scanning was performed during a paradigm that allowed us to isolate the anticipatory representations of active interpersonal touch while controlling for nonsocial sensorimotor processes and possible confounds because of interpersonal relationships or socioemotional valence. Active interpersonal touch was studied both as skin-to-skin contact and as object-mediated touch. The results showed weaker deactivation in primary somatosensory cortex and medial pFC and stronger activation in cerebellum for the animate target, compared with the inanimate target, when intending to touch it with one's own hand. Differently, in anticipation of touching the human hand with an object, anterior inferior parietal lobule and lateral occipital-temporal cortex showed stronger activity. When actually touching a human hand with one's own hand, activation was stronger in medial pFC but weaker in primary somatosensory cortex. The findings provide new insight on the contribution of simulation and sensory prediction mechanisms to active social behavior. They also suggest that literally getting in touch with someone and touching someone by using an object might be approached by an agent as functionally distinct conditions

You turn me cold: evidence for temperature contagion

Introduction During social interactions, our own physiological responses influence those of others. Synchronization of physiological (and behavioural) responses can facilitate emotional understanding and group coherence through inter-subjectivity. Here we investigate if observing cues indicating a change in another's body temperature results in a corresponding temperature change in the observer. Methods Thirty-six healthy participants (age; 22.9±3.1 yrs) each observed, then rated, eight purpose-made videos (3 min duration) that depicted actors with either their right or left hand in visibly warm (warm videos) or cold water (cold videos). Four control videos with the actors' hand in front of the water were also shown. Temperature of participant observers' right and left hands was concurrently measured using a thermistor within a Wheatstone bridge with a theoretical temperature sensitivity of <0.0001°C. Temperature data were analysed in a repeated measures ANOVA (temperature × actor's hand × observer's hand). Results Participants rated the videos showing hands immersed in cold water as being significantly cooler than hands immersed in warm water, F(1,34) = 256.67, p0.1). There was however no evidence of left-right mirroring of these temperature effects p>0.1). Sensitivity to temperature contagion was also predicted by inter-individual differences in self-report empathy. Conclusions We illustrate physiological contagion of temperature in healthy individuals, suggesting that empathetic understanding for primary low-level physiological challenges (as well as more complex emotions) are grounded in somatic simulation

Social touch and human development.

Social touch is a powerful force in human development, shaping social reward, attachment, cognitive, communication, and emotional regulation from infancy and throughout life. In this review, we consider the question of how social touch is defined from both bottom-up and top-down perspectives. In the former category, there is a clear role for the C-touch (CT) system, which constitutes a unique submodality that mediates affective touch and contrasts with discriminative touch. Top-down factors such as culture, personal relationships, setting, gender, and other contextual influences are also important in defining and interpreting social touch. The critical role of social touch throughout the lifespan is considered, with special attention to infancy and young childhood, a time during which social touch and its neural, behavioral, and physiological contingencies contribute to reinforcement-based learning and impact a variety of developmental trajectories. Finally, the role of social touch in an example of disordered development -autism spectrum disorder-is reviewed

Integrative Processing of Touch and Affect in Social Perception: An fMRI Study

Social perception commonly employs multiple sources of information. The present study aimed at investigating the integrative processing of affective social signals. Task-related and task-free functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed in 26 healthy adult participants during a social perception task concerning dynamic visual stimuli simultaneously depicting facial expressions of emotion and tactile sensations that could be either congruent or incongruent. Confounding effects due to affective valence, inhibitory top–down influences, cross-modal integration, and conflict processing were minimized. The results showed that the perception of congruent, compared to incongruent stimuli, elicited enhanced neural activity in a set of brain regions including left amygdala, bilateral posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and left superior parietal cortex. These congruency effects did not differ as a function of emotion or sensation. A complementary task-related functional interaction analysis preliminarily suggested that amygdala activity depended on previous processing stages in fusiform gyrus and PCC. The findings provide support for the integrative processing of social information about others’ feelings from manifold bodily sources (sensory-affective information) in amygdala and PCC. Given that the congruent stimuli were also judged as being more self-related and more familiar in terms of personal experience in an independent sample of participants, we speculate that such integrative processing might be mediated by the linking of external stimuli with self-experience. Finally, the prediction of task-related responses in amygdala by intrinsic functional connectivity between amygdala and PCC during a task-free state implies a neuro-functional basis for an individual predisposition for the integrative processing of social stimulus content

Embodied Simulation and Touch: the Sense of Touch in Social Cognition

This paper explores the sense of touch in relation to social cognition offering a new take on multisensory integration in the brain, within the framework of Embodied simulation (ES) theory. ES provides a new empirically based notion of intersubjectivity, viewed first and foremost as intercorporeality. In relation to touch, by means of ES we do not just “see” a sensation experienced by someone else and then understand it through an inference by analogy. By means of ES we can map others’ sensations by re-using our own motor, somatosensory and viscero-motor representations. ES provides an original and unitary account of basic aspects of intersubjectivity, demonstrating how deeply our making sense of others’ living and acting bodies is rooted in the power of re-using our own motor, somatosensory and viscero-motor resources

I am Me:Brain systems integrate and segregate to establish a multidimensional sense of self

Humans experience a sense of self, which is proposed to emerge from the integration of intrinsic and extrinsic self-processing through the propagation of information across brain systems. Using a novel functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm, we tested this hypothesis in a non-clinical sample by modulating the intrinsic and extrinsic self-relatedness of auditory action consequences in terms of identity and agency, respectively. In addition, the relevance of individual traits associated with altered self-experiences (e.g., psychosis-like experiences) was examined. The task-evoked fMRI results showed distinctive associations between the neural coding of identity and negative affect traits, and between agency and psychosis-like experiences. Most importantly, regarding the functional connectivity analysis, graph theoretical measures demonstrated that the simultaneous processing of identity and agency relies on the functional integration and segregation of default mode, sensorimotor, language, and executive brain networks. Finally, cross-network interactions mediated by executive and sensorimotor regions were negatively associated with psychosis-like experiences when the intrinsic and extrinsic self-relatedness of action consequences conflicted. These findings provide evidence that the self is a multidimensional phenomenon rooted in the functional interactions between large-scale neuronal networks. Such interactions may have particular relevance for self-experience alterations

Maternal age effects on myometrial expression of contractile proteins, uterine gene expression, and contractile activity during labor in the rat

Advanced maternal age of first time pregnant mothers is associated with prolonged and dysfunctional labor and significant risk of emergency cesarean section. We investigated the influence of maternal age on myometrial contractility, expression of contractile associated proteins (CAPs), and global gene expression in the parturient uterus. Female Wistar rats either 8 (YOUNG n = 10) or 24 (OLDER n = 10) weeks old were fed laboratory chow, mated, and killed during parturition. Myometrial strips were dissected to determine contractile activity, cholesterol (CHOL) and triglycerides (TAG) content, protein expression of connexin-43 (GJA1), prostaglandin endoperoxide synthase 2 (PTGS2), and caveolin 1 (CAV-1). Maternal plasma concentrations of prostaglandins PGE2, PGF2a, and progesterone were determined by RIA. Global gene expression in uterine samples was compared using Affymetrix Genechip Gene 2.0 ST arrays and Ingenuity Pathway analysis (IPA). Spontaneous contractility in myometrium exhibited by YOUNG rats was threefold greater than OLDER animals (P < 0.027) but maternal age had no significant effect on myometrial CAP expression, lipid profiles, or pregnancy related hormones. OLDER myometrium increased contractile activity in response to PGF2a, phenylephrine, and carbachol, a response absent in YOUNG rats (all P < 0.002). Microarray analysis identified that maternal age affected expression of genes related to immune and inflammatory responses, lipid transport and metabolism, steroid metabolism, tissue remodeling, and smooth muscle contraction. In conclusion YOUNG laboring rat myometrium seems primed to contract maximally, whereas activity is blunted in OLDER animals and requires stimulation to meet contractile potential. Further work investigating maternal age effects on myometrial function is required with focus on lipidmetabolism and inflammatory pathways

The neurobiology of interoception in health and disease

Interoception is the sensing of internal bodily sensations. Interoception is an umbrella term that encompasses (1) the afferent (body‐to‐brain) signaling through distinct neural and humoral (including immune and endocrine) channels; (2) the neural encoding, representation, and integration of this information concerning internal bodily state; (3) the influence of such information on other perceptions, cognitions, and behaviors; (4) and the psychological expression of these representations as consciously accessible physical sensations and feelings. Interoceptive mechanisms ensure physiological health through the cerebral coordination of homeostatic reflexes and allostatic responses that include motivational behaviors and associated affective and emotional feelings. Furthermore, the conscious, unitary sense of self in time and space may be grounded in the primacy and lifelong continuity of interoception. Body‐to‐brain interactions influence physical and mental well‐being. Consequently, we show that systematic investigation of how individual differences, and within‐individual changes, in interoceptive processing can contribute to the mechanistic understanding of physical and psychological disorders. We present a neurobiological overview of interoception and describe how interoceptive impairments at different levels relate to specific physical and mental health conditions, including sickness behaviors and fatigue, depression, eating disorders, autism, and anxiety. We frame these findings in an interoceptive predictive processing framework and highlight potential new avenues for treatments