Tactile sensitivity, tactile acuity, and affective touch: from childhood to early adolescence

Zingaretti, Pietro; Petta, Anna Maria; Cruciani, Gianluca; Spitoni, Grazia Fernanda

doi:10.1080/08990220.2019.1604334

Cited by 14 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…slow stroking) over neutral touch (very slow or fast stroking) from childhood [18] to adolescence and adulthood [19]. Notably, this preference for affective touch seems to rise with age, independently from discriminative tactile abilities, suggesting that the two tactile functions might develop independently, and the experience of affective touch during positive social interactions might shape the pleasantness people attribute to this stimulation [17,20].…”

Section: Neurophysiological Properties Of Affective Touch During Deve...mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…This second dimension of touch, named affective touch, is mediated by a specialized system of slow conducting peripheral afferents (C-tactile system) that are present only in the hairy skin of mammals and selectively respond to gentle and slow caress-like touch delivered at skin-like temperature [14,15], leading to subjective pleasantness [16]. Preliminary evidence suggests that during childhood, children's hairy skin gradually reduces its tactile sensitivity and acuity, thus tuning to affective rather than discriminative touch [17]. Despite there seems to be a profound inter-individual variability due to age, developmental phases, experiences and gender, humans generally prefer affective (i.e.…”

Section: Neurophysiological Properties Of Affective Touch During Deve...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The self-regulatory affective touch: a speculative framework for the development of executive functioning

Farroni

Longa

Valori

2022

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences

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Section: Neurophysiological Properties Of Affective Touch During Deve...mentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Neurophysiological Properties Of Affective Touch During Deve...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The self-regulatory affective touch: a speculative framework for the development of executive functioning

Farroni

Longa

Valori

2022

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences

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“…Studies of tactile and nociceptive responses in paediatrics have focused primarily on premature and term infants [11,12,25,26], or on older children of the age and cognitive development that requires the use of verbal responses [5,6,25,27,28], and generally provide data from a single point in time.…”

Section: Study Aimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Deprivation of touch stimulation during childhood is associated with physical and cognitive deficits [3]. While maturation of tactile and pain processing are well characterised in adults and older children [4][5][6], little has been described about how tactile sensitivity develops in infancy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tactile sensitivity and motor coordination in infancy: Effect of age, prior surgery, anaesthesia & critical illness

et al. 2022

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Background Tactile sensitivity in the infant period is poorly characterized, particularly among children with prior surgery, anaesthesia or critical illness. The study aims were to investigate tactile sensitivity of the foot and the associated coordination of lower limb motor movement in typically developing infants with and without prior hospital experience, and to develop feasible bedside sensory testing protocols. Materials and methods A prospective, longitudinal study in 69 infants at 2 and 4 months-old, with and without prior hospital admission. Mechanical stimuli were applied to the foot at graded innocuous and noxious intensities. Primary outcome measures were tactile and nociceptive threshold (lowest force required to evoke any leg movement, or brisk leg withdrawal, respectively), and specific motor flexion threshold (ankle-, knee-, hip-flexion). Secondary analysis investigated (i) single vs multiple trials reliability, and (ii) the effect of age and prior surgery, anaesthesia, or critical illness on mechanical threshold. Results Magnitude of evoked motor activity increased with stimulus intensity. Single trials had excellent reliability for knee and hip flexion at age 1-3m and 4-7m (ICC range: 0.8 to 0.98, p >0.05). Nociceptive threshold varied as a function of age. Tactile sensitivity was independent of age, number of surgeries, general anaesthesia and ICU stay. Conclusions This brief sensory testing protocol may reliably measure tactile and nociceptive reactivity in human infants. Age predicts nociceptive threshold which likely reflects ongoing maturation of spinal and supraspinal circuits. Prior hospital experience has a negligible global effect on sensory processing demonstrating the resilience of the CNS in adverse environments.

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“…Given that previous studies found that age affected both empathy 41 – 43 as well as tactile processing 43 – 45 , we added age as a further variable in our analyses.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dispositional empathy predicts primary somatosensory cortex activity while receiving touch by a hand

Schaefer

Kühnel

Rumpel

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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Previous research revealed an active network of brain areas such as insula and anterior cingulate cortex when witnessing somebody else in pain and feeling empathy. But numerous studies also suggested a role of the somatosensory cortices for state and trait empathy. While recent studies highlight the role of the observer’s primary somatosensory cortex when seeing painful or nonpainful touch, the interaction of somatosensory cortex activity with empathy when receiving touch on the own body is unknown. The current study examines the relationship of touch related somatosensory cortex activity with dispositional empathy by employing an fMRI approach. Participants were touched on the palm of the hand either by the hand of an experimenter or by a rubber hand. We found that the BOLD responses in the primary somatosensory cortex were associated with empathy personality traits personal distress and perspective taking. This relationship was observed when participants were touched both with the experimenter’s real hand or a rubber hand. What is the reason for this link between touch perception and trait empathy? We argue that more empathic individuals may express stronger attention both to other’s human perceptions as well as to the own sensations. In this way, higher dispositional empathy levels might enhance tactile processing by top-down processes. We discuss possible implications of these findings.

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Tactile sensitivity, tactile acuity, and affective touch: from childhood to early adolescence

Cited by 14 publications

References 42 publications

The self-regulatory affective touch: a speculative framework for the development of executive functioning

The self-regulatory affective touch: a speculative framework for the development of executive functioning

Tactile sensitivity and motor coordination in infancy: Effect of age, prior surgery, anaesthesia & critical illness

Dispositional empathy predicts primary somatosensory cortex activity while receiving touch by a hand

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