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PubMed2005

Dynamic modulation of the primary somatosensory cortex during seeing and feeling a touched hand.

Previous work has demonstrated cross-modal links between vision and somatosensation at an early stage of sensory processing. Furthermore, recent behavioral studies have shown that viewing the stimulated body part can enhance tactile discrimination ability at the stimulated site. This study aims to investigate the role of the primary somatosensory cortex (SI) during visuotactile integration processes. Subjects looked at a hand in a video being touched on the first digit (D1) in synchrony with felt touches on their real hidden hand as compared with watching a video with asynchronous touches. During synchronous stimulation, subjects reported to feel the tactile sensation on the video hand, thus indicating that in this condition the subjects regarded the video hand as their own touched hand. This feeling disappeared in the asynchronous condition. Using neuromagnetic source imaging, we assessed the topography of the functional organization of SI related to tactile stimulation of D1. The cortical representation of D1 moved to a more inferior location during synchronous in comparison to asynchronous stimulation and rest. This modulation of the map in SI was significantly positively correlated with the feeling that the seen touch in the video represented the touch on the real hand. Thus, only if the seen touch is attributed to the own body, SI seems to be modulated.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2001

Noninformative vision improves the spatial resolution of touch in humans.

Research on sensory perception now often considers more than one sense at a time. This approach reflects real-world situations, such as when a visible object touches us. Indeed, vision and touch show great interdependence: the sight of a body part can reduce tactile target detection times [1], visual and tactile attentional systems are spatially linked [2], and the texture of surfaces that are actively touched with the fingertips is perceived using both vision and touch [3]. However, these previous findings might be mediated by spatial attention [1, 2] or by improved guidance of movement [3] via visually enhanced body position sense [4--6]. Here, we investigate the direct effects of viewing the body on passive touch. We measured tactile two-point discrimination thresholds [7] on the forearm while manipulating the visibility of the arm but holding gaze direction constant. The spatial resolution of touch was better when the arm was visible than when it was not. Tactile performance was further improved when the view of the arm was magnified. In contrast, performance was not improved by viewing a neutral object at the arm's location, ruling out improved spatial orienting as a possible account. Controls confirmed that no information about the tactile stimulation was provided by visibility of the arm. This visual enhancement of touch may point to online reorganization of tactile receptive fields.

Humans↗
PubMed2004

Light touch and center of mass stability during treadmill locomotion.

PURPOSE: To study the contributions of light fingertip touch on an earth-referenced object to body stability during treadmill locomotion. METHOD: Twenty young healthy adults were tested in two blocks of five testing conditions while walking on the treadmill at 3 km/h. In each condition, subjects were tested with eyes open (EO) and with eyes closed (EC). In each block, four separate conditions of heavy (H) or light (L) touch to either a left or to a right force sensor mounted on the respective side rail, as well as one condition of no touch (N), were randomly applied. The 3D positions of the center of mass (COM) and the midpoint of the posterior aspect of each leg were monitored via a kinematic ultrasonic system, while the anterior-posterior (AP) acceleration of the COM was measured with a uniaxial linear accelerometer. RESULTS: Light touch had a similar stabilizing effect as vision and as heavy touch on COM sway. Thus, COM sway and AP acceleration were comparable in conditions of eyes open and eyes closed as long as touch was applied. Conversely, without vision and touch, subjects drifted backwards, with complete disruption of the coordinated stepping pattern. CONCLUSIONS: Somatosensory fingertip input from an external reference provides spatial orientation, which, similar to vision, enables the sustaining of body stability during treadmill walking.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Touch communicates distinct emotions.

The study of emotional signaling has focused almost exclusively on the face and voice. In 2 studies, the authors investigated whether people can identify emotions from the experience of being touched by a stranger on the arm (without seeing the touch). In the 3rd study, they investigated whether observers can identify emotions from watching someone being touched on the arm. Two kinds of evidence suggest that humans can communicate numerous emotions with touch. First, participants in the United States (Study 1) and Spain (Study 2) could decode anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude, and sympathy via touch at much-better-than-chance levels. Second, fine-grained coding documented specific touch behaviors associated with different emotions. In Study 3, the authors provide evidence that participants can accurately decode distinct emotions by merely watching others communicate via touch. The findings are discussed in terms of their contributions to affective science and the evolution of altruism and cooperation.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1999

Physical touch in nursing studies: a literature review.

In nursing contexts a distinction is made between two types of touch: physical touch and therapeutic touch. Physical touch may be experienced as therapeutic, but that is not its explicit purpose in the same way as with therapeutic touch. Most of the touch studies reviewed in this article are from the United States of America, Canada and the United Kingdom and thus represent the culture of modern western society. The area covered by these studies is far from coherent, and even the results are to some extent contradictory. It follows that it is difficult to draw any firm conclusions from this review of the concepts, methods and main results of touch studies.

Empathy↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Using therapeutic touch in nursing practice.

This article is an introduction to "therapeutic touch" and its implications for nursing. A case study provides an example of how therapeutic touch was used with an individual who fell from a ladder and injured his elbow. A brief history and assumptions that support the practice of therapeutic touch are discussed. Rogers' Science of Unitary Human Beings, a nursing theory, provides a theoretical basis for therapeutic touch. The method developed by Kunz and Krieger involves four phases and each of these is identified and described. General uses for therapeutic touch are presented and a variety of research studies validate the practice of therapeutic touch in nursing. Resources are provided for those who may be interested in learning more about therapeutic touch.

Holistic Health↗
PubMed2004

Clinical holistic medicine: classic art of healing or the therapeutic touch.

Touching is often a forgotten part of medicine. The manual medicine or therapeutic touch (TT) is much more powerful than many modern, biomedically oriented physicians think. Pain and discomfort can be alleviated just by touching the sick area and in this way help the patient to be in better contact with the tissue and organs of their body. Lack of presence in the body seems to be connected with many symptoms that can be readily reversed simply by sensitive touch. When touch is combined with therapeutic work on mind and feelings, holistic healing seems to be facilitated and many problems can be solved in a direct and easy way in the clinic without drugs. This paper gives examples of the strength of manual medicine or therapeutic touch in its most simple form, and points to the power of physical contact between physician and his patient in the context of the theory and practice of holistic healing. Intimacy seems highly beneficial for the process of healing and it is very important to distinguish clearly between intimacy and sexuality for the physician and his patent to be able to give and receive touch without fear and without holding back emotionally.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Effects of light fingertip touch on postural responses in subjects with diabetic neuropathy.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the potential benefits from lightly touching an external supporting device on automatic postural responses to support surface translations, in subjects with profound sensory neuropathy in the feet due to diabetes mellitus (DM-PN). METHODS: Eight subjects with DM-PN and 10 age matched controls were tested under randomly ordered conditions of no fingertip touch (NT), light touch (LT; <1 N), and heavy touch (HT, as needed) of a stationary touch plate, during three backward translation velocities of the support surface at 10, 20, and 30 cm/s. Dependent variables included response latencies, CoP velocity, and the slope of the relation between centre of pressure (CoP) velocity and translation velocity as a measure of response scaling. RESULTS: Postural response latencies were significantly longer and scaling of initial response magnitude in proportion to translation velocity was significantly smaller in the DM-PN subjects compared to the control subjects. LT had no significant effect on response latencies of the DM-PN patients. Fingertip touch increased the slope of the scaling of postural response magnitude in both groups. However, DM-PN subjects had to use HT to improve response scaling, whereas control subjects improved scaling with LT as well as HT. LT significantly increased rightward CoP velocity towards the touch plate in all subjects. CONCLUSIONS: LT did not reduce the latency or improve the scaling of automatic postural responses in subjects with peripheral neuropathy. The major effect of LT on the automatic postural responses of the DM-PN subjects was in increasing CoP velocity towards the side of the supporting device. HT in neuropathy subjects and LT in age matched control subjects increased the sensitivity of initial postural response scaling, suggesting that somatosensory substitution from a cane in the hand could be used to improve the magnitude of medium latency postural responses to slips and trips.

Aged↗
PubMed1999

Electrophysiological and behavioral analysis of lip touch as a component of the food stimulus in the snail Lymnaea.

Electrophysiological and video recording methods were used to investigate the function of lip touch in feeding ingestion behavior of the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis. Although this stimulus was used successfully as a conditioning stimulus (CS) in appetitive learning experiments, the detailed role of lip touch as a component of the sensory stimulus provided by food in unconditioned feeding behavior was never ascertained. Synaptic responses to lip touch in identified feeding motoneurons, central pattern generator interneurons, and modulatory interneurons were recorded by intracellular electrodes in a semi-intact preparation. We showed that touch evoked a complex but characteristic sequence of synaptic inputs on each neuron type. Touch never simply activated feeding cycles but provided different types of synaptic input, determined by the feeding phase in which the neuron was normally active in the rhythmic feeding cycle. The tactile stimulus evoked mainly inhibitory synaptic inputs in protraction-phase neurons and excitation in rasp-phase neurons. Swallow-phase neurons were also excited after some delay, suggesting that touch first reinforces the rasp then swallow phase. Video analysis of freely feeding animals demonstrated that during normal ingestion of a solid food flake the food is drawn across the lips throughout the rasp phase and swallow phase and therefore provides a tactile stimulus during both these retraction phases of the feeding cycle. The tactile component of the food stimulus is strongest during the rasp phase when the lips are actively pressed onto the substrate that is being moved across them by the radula. By using a semi-intact preparation we demonstrated that application of touch to the lips during the rasp phase of a sucrose-driven fictive feeding rhythm increases both the regularity and frequency of rasp-phase motoneuron firing compared with sucrose applied alone.

Animals↗
PubMed2003

A personal journey in understanding physical touch as a nursing intervention.

Physical touch is a critical concept in the nursing profession and an essential component in patient healing. Literature sources reviewed in this article support the presence of both positive and negative patient responses to nurses' touch. Comprehensive steps to ensure positive responses to touch are proposed. This article reports a registered nurse's transitional journey through nursing school and related experiences and concludes with an advanced appreciation for physical touch as a nursing intervention. The article integrates research and personal experience to emphasize the importance of touch in the author's life and in nursing. Although there are many uses of the word touch, in this document, the term refers to physical touch.

Education, Nursing↗
PubMed1993

Combinatorial control of touch receptor neuron expression in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Six touch receptor neurons with distinctive morphological features sense gentle touch in Caenorhabditis elegans. Previous studies have identified three genes (lin-32, unc-86 and mec-3) that regulate touch cell development. However, since other cell types also require these genes, we suspected that other genes help restrict the expression of touch cell characteristics to the six neurons seen in the wild type. To identify such genes, we have examined mutants defective in genes required for the development of other C. elegans cells for changes in the pattern of touch cell-specific features. Mutations in seven genes either reduce (lin-14) or increase (lin-4, egl-44, egl-46, sem-4, ced-3 and ced-4) the number of touch receptor-like cells. The combinatorial action of these genes, all of which are required for the production of many cell types, restrict the number of cells expressing touch receptor characteristics in wild-type animals by acting as positive and negative regulators and by removing cells by programmed cell death.

Animals↗
PubMed2005

Effects of modeling and topic stimulus on self-referent touching.

Self-touching is defined as self-directed touches, e.g., scratching or rubbing, that have no apparent conscious motivation. Earlier research on self-touching focused on internal processes associated with self-touching, e.g., mental conflict, while more recent research has considered external motivators, such as an auditory or visual presentation of a provocative stimulus, e.g., leeches. Here, 110 undergraduate psychology students (68 women, 42 men; M age = 18.7 yr., SD = 1.0) were shown a video about chiggers to replicate previous findings, while simultaneously studying the social influence of self-touching modeled by the presenter. A significant interaction was found as modeled self-touching significantly increased participants' self-touching when they were also attending to the video about chiggers. The results are discussed in terms of potential processes underlying this behavior and directions for research.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

Effects of differential touch on nervous system arousal of patients recovering from cardiac disease.

Previous research suggests that the neural properties of certain types of touch as well as their perceived significance to the disease state may be related to heightened activation of the nervous system. In this study the effects of different types of touch on nervous system arousal were examined in 59 adult patients who were receiving treatment for coronary artery disease. They were exposed to a standardized protocol that systematically varied the neural properties and procedural nature of the touch received. Measures of cardiovascular reactivity (heart rate and rhythm data as well as blood pressure measurements) and state anxiety were used as indexes of arousal. The results indicated that all types of touch evoked heart rate deceleration in contrast to both baseline and verbal conditions. However, there were no differential effects related to either the neural properties or procedural nature of touch. Diastolic blood pressure and state anxiety were also lower as a result of the touch. No changes were observed for systolic blood pressure or heart rhythm. In general, findings suggested that touch served to reduce arousal rather than to produce negative psychophysiologic consequences for recovery.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Dentist's reassuring touch: effects on children's behavior.

Physical contact with patients by health care providers has been found to benefit the patients by reducing their fearful or avoidant reactions. This study tested whether a reassuring touch could be used during a routine pediatric dental examination to reduce children's anxiety and improve their behavior. Thirty-eight children between 3.5 and 10 years of age were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions. Children assigned to the touch condition were patted on the upper arm or shoulder on two separate occasions by the dentist during the examination while simultaneously receiving verbal reassurance and descriptions of the upcoming procedures. Children in the no-touch control condition received only the reassuring verbal descriptions without contact. Results indicated that touched children between the ages of 7 and 10 years (but not children aged 3.5 to 7 years) displayed less fidgeting behavior than their no-touch counterparts (P < 0.05). Post-treatment, children who were touched tended to report greater pleasure (P < 0.06) but less dominance (P < 0.10) than children not touched.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed1996

Depressed mothers' touching increases infants' positive affect and attention in still-face interactions.

The effects of depressed mothers' touching on their infants' behavior were investigated during the still-face situation. 48 depressed and nondepressed mothers and their 3-month-old infants were randomly assigned to control and experimental conditions. 4 successive 90-sec periods were implemented: (A) normal play, (B) still-face-no-touch, (C) still-face-with-touch, and (A) normal play. Depressed and nondepressed mothers were instructed and shown how to provide touch for their infants during the still-face-with-touch period. Different affective and attentive responses of the infants of depressed versus the infants of nondepressed mothers were observed. Infants of depressed mothers showed more positive affect (smiles and vocalizations) and gazed more at their mothers' hands during the still-face-with-touch period than the infants of nondepressed mothers, who grimaced, cried, and gazed away from their mothers' faces more often. The results suggest that by providing touch stimulation for their infants, the depressed mothers can increase infant positive affect and attention and, in this way, compensate for negative effects often resulting from their typical lack of affectivity (flat facial and vocal expressions) during interactions.

Affect↗
PubMed1998

Zebrafish touch-insensitive mutants reveal an essential role for the developmental regulation of sodium current.

Developmental changes in neuronal connectivity and membrane properties underlie the stage-specific appearance of embryonic behaviors. The behavioral response of embryonic zebrafish to tactile stimulation first appears at 27 hr postfertilization. Because the touch response requires the activation of mechanosensory Rohon-Beard neurons, we have used whole-cell recordings in semi-intact preparations to characterize Rohon-Beard cell electrical membrane properties in several touch-insensitive mutants and then to correlate the development of excitability in these cells with changes in wild-type behavior. Electrophysiological analysis of mechanosensory neurons of touch-insensitive zebrafish mutants indicates that in three mutant lines that have been examined the sodium current amplitudes are reduced, and action potentials either have diminished overshoots or are not generated. In macho mutants the action potential never overshoots, and the sodium current remains small; alligator and steifftier show similar but weaker effects. The effects are specific to sodium channel function; resting membrane potentials are unaffected, and outward currents of normal amplitude are present. Developmental analysis of sodium current expression in mechanosensory neurons of wild-type embryos indicates that, during the transition from a touch-insensitive to a touch-sensitive embryo, action potentials acquire larger overshoots and briefer durations as both sodium and potassium currents increase in amplitude. However, in macho touch-insensitive mutants, developmental changes in action potential overshoot and sodium current are absent despite the normal regulation of action potential duration and potassium current. Thus, the maturation of a voltage-dependent sodium current promotes a behavioral response to touch. A study of these mutants will allow insight into the genes controlling the maturation of the affected sodium current.

Action Potentials↗
PubMed1994

Localization of nerve growth factor (NGF) and low-affinity NGF receptors in touch domes and quantification of NGF mRNA in keratinocytes of adult rats.

Touch domes are clearly delineated mechanoreceptors that are visible on the depilated skin of mammals. These structures consist of a sharply circumscribed disk of thickened epithelium surmounting a group of Merkel cells that are innervated by type I sensory neurons. These characteristic cutaneous structures provide an ideal opportunity for investigating whether the localization of nerve growth factor (NGF) in the skin is related to sites of sensory axon termination. For these reasons, we have used immunocytochemistry to study the distribution of NGF and the low-affinity NGF receptor (p75NGFR) in the touch domes of adult rat skin. Intense NGF-like immunoreactivity was sharply restricted to keratinocytes (excluding the stratum corneum) of the thickened epidermis of touch domes. The epidermis immediately surrounding touch domes and the epidermis of the tylotrich hair follicle associated with touch domes were not stained by anti-NGF antiserum. Merkel cells of the basal epidermis of touch domes were immunonegative for NGF but were immunopositive for p75NGFR as were the type I nerve endings innervating these cells. Quantitative Northern blotting revealed that the level of NGF mRNA was substantially higher in keratinocytes isolated from the stratum granulosum and stratum spinosum than in keratinocytes isolated from the stratum germinativum. These findings indicate that NGF synthesis in mature skin has a highly restricted regional distribution that is primarily associated with the innervation of a specialized touch receptor.

Animals↗
PubMed1999

Do centrally programmed anticipatory postural adjustments in fast stepping affect performance of an associated "touche" movement?

Ensuring maximum speed in executing a sequence of two voluntary movements requires the second movement to be triggered only after some delay. This is due to the existence of a "relative refractory period." If the second movement is initiated during the refractory period, its speed decreases (movement time increases). In the present study we tested the existence of a refractory period during the execution of a sequence of movements involving both the upper and the lower limbs. More precisely, we examined whether the maximal speed of the touche fencing movement is affected by the anticipatory postural adjustments (APA) preceding a voluntary lunge. The touche and the lunge are similar to a pointing task and a stepping forward movement, respectively. touche consists of hitting a target with a foil at maximal velocity. The results show that (a) when the touche was initiated prior to the onset of the APA of the lunge, the maximal foil velocity remains similar to that of an isolated touche, and (b) when the touche is initiated during the development of the APA of the lunge, the maximal foil velocity is lower than in the isolated touche. Furthermore, the maximal foil velocity decreases with the temporal progression of the APA and reaches its minimal value when initiated at the time of voluntary lunge execution ('foot off'). The discussion suggests that the centrally programmed APA that are elicited in the stepping forward movement induces a refractory period which affects performance of the pointing task.

Adult↗