Pleasant Touch

Pleasant Touch

Reviewed by Faisal Zaidi

Slow, gentle stroking of the skin that people rate as pleasant.

What it is

Loken and colleagues found that C-tactile afferents responded most to brushing at about 1 to 10 centimetres per second, the speeds volunteers rated most pleasant, and proposed a dedicated route for pleasant touch likely tuned to affiliative contact.

In effect

The article on weighted toys and comfort blankets uses it to explain why soft fabric drawn slowly across the skin feels good.

What it does not say

The finding concerns nerve responses and ratings of brushing speeds in volunteers. It does not say that weighted or soft objects produce the same response or that any object soothes a given person.

Sources

  1. Löken, L. S., Wessberg, J., Morrison, I., McGlone, F., & Olausson, H. (2009). Coding of pleasant touch by unmyelinated afferents in humans. Nature Neuroscience, 12(5), 547-548.