Trial reportHuman brain mapping2017
How the brain codes intimacy: The neurobiological substrates of romantic touch.
Trial report in Human brain mapping, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 100 citations in OpenAlex.
- Massage and touch-based therapy : Clinical evidence, neurobiology and applications in older patients with psychiatric symptoms.Zeitschrift fur Gerontologie und Geriatrie · 2021Pooled it
- Trial
- Effects of exogenous oxytocin and estradiol on resting-state functional connectivity in women and men.Scientific reports · 2023Trial
- Kinetics of oxytocin effects on amygdala and striatal reactivity vary between women and men.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2020Trial
- Common and dissociable effects of oxytocin and lorazepam on the neurocircuitry of fear.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Trial
- Effects of opioid receptor stimulation and blockade on touch pleasantness: a double-blind randomised trial.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2019Trial
- Oxytocin enhances the pain-relieving effects of social support in romantic couples.Human brain mapping · 2019Trial
- Reduced relationship-specific social touching and atypical association with emotional bonding in autistic adults.Molecular autism · 2025Article
- A review of the effects of different types of social behaviors on the recruitment of neuropeptides and neurotransmitters in the nucleus accumbens.Frontiers in neuroendocrinology · 2025Review
- Prairie voles as a model for adaptive reward remodeling following loss of a bonded partner.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2024Review
- Intense Body Contact Increases Homosexual Pair Bond Stability in Female Japanese Macaques (Macaca fuscata).Archives of sexual behavior · 2024Article
- Role of medial prefrontal cortex and primary somatosensory cortex in self and other-directed vicarious social touch: a TMS study.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2023Article
- Affectionate touch and diurnal oxytocin levels: An ecological momentary assessment study.eLife · 2023Article
- Article
- Article
- Affective touch in the context of development, oxytocin signaling, and autism.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Review
- Hearing, touching, and multisensory integration during mate choice.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2022Review
- The Interprocessual-Self Theory in Support of Human Neuroscience Studies.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Oxytocin receptor binding in the titi monkey hippocampal formation is associated with parental status and partner affiliation.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- The transient joys of others-neural ensembles encode social approach in bonded voles.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Humans belong to a minority of mammalian species that exhibit monogamous pair-bonds, thereby enabling biparental care of offspring. The high reward value of interpersonal closeness and touch in couples is a key proximate mechanism facilitating the maintenance of enduring romantic bonds. However, surprisingly, the neurobiological underpinnings mediating the unique experience of a romantic partner's touch remain unknown. In this randomized placebo (PLC)-controlled, between-group, pharmacofunctional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study involving 192 healthy volunteers (96 heterosexual couples), we intranasally administered 24 IU of the hypothalamic peptide oxytocin (OXT) to either the man or the woman. Subsequently, we scanned the subjects while they assumed that they were being touched by their romantic partners or by an unfamiliar person of the opposite sex, although in reality an identical pattern of touch was always given by the same experimenter. Our results show that intranasal OXT compared to PLC selectively enhanced the subjective pleasantness of the partner's touch. Importantly, intranasal OXT selectively increased responses to partner touch in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and anterior cingulate cortex. Under OXT, NAcc activations to partner touch positively correlated with the subjects' evaluation of their relationship quality. Collectively, our results suggest that OXT may contribute to the maintenance of monogamous relationships in humans by concomitantly increasing the reward value of partner touch and diminishing the hedonic quality of stranger touch. Hum Brain Mapp 38:4525-4534, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.