Love and affection is expressed through a range of physically intimate gestures, including
caresses. Recent studies suggest that posterior temporal lobe areas typically associated�…

Across different cultures, social touch is used to alleviate distress. Here we adopt a dual-
brain approach with fMRI to examine whether social touch involves similar activations�…

Interpersonal touch and social support can influence physical health, mental well-being and
pain. However, the mechanisms by which supportive touch promotes analgesia are not well�…

Social touch may modulate emotions, but the neurobehavioral correlates are poorly
understood. Here, we investigated neural responses to a picture of a deceased close person�…

Social contact is essential for survival in human society. A previous study demonstrated that
interpersonal contact alleviates pain-related distress by suppressing the activity of its�…

Supportive touch has remarkable benefits in childbirth and during painful medical
procedures. But does social touch influence pain neurophysiology, ie, the brain processes�…

Another person's caress is one of the most powerful of all emotional social signals. How
much the primary somatosensory cortices (SIs) participate in processing the pleasantness of�…

Touch is central to interpersonal interactions. Touch conveys specific emotions about the
touch provider, but it is not clear whether this is a purely socially learned function or whether�…

Social touch—the affiliative skin-to-skin contact between individuals—can rapidly evoke
emotions of comfort, pleasure, or calm, and is essential for mental and physical well-being�…

The neural mechanisms facilitating the experience of vicarious social touch are largely
unknown. The right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) has been suggested as part of a simulation�…