ArticleDevelopmental cognitive neuroscience2019
Infants discriminate the source of social touch at stroking speeds eliciting maximal firing rates in CT-fibers.
Article in Developmental cognitive neuroscience, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 52 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effect of parental touch on relieving acute procedural pain in neonates and parental anxiety (Petal): a multicentre, randomised controlled trial in the UK.The Lancet. Child & adolescent health · 2024Trial
- Daily mother-infant skin-to-skin contact and maternal mental health and postpartum healing: a randomized controlled trial.Scientific reports · 2022Trial
- Development of interoception: the critical role of maternal affective touch in early attachment.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
- Correction.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2025Article
- The influence of affective touch on interoceptive and exteroceptive sensory integration in infants: evidence from heartbeat-evoked and event-related potentials.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Infant neural sensitivity to affective touch is associated with maternal postpartum depression.Infant behavior & development · 2024Article
- Parental participation in neonatal heel lance pain management.Translational pediatrics · 2024Article
- Infant neural sensitivity to affective touch is associated with maternal postpartum depression.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- The meaning of touch: Relational and individual variables shape emotions and intentions associated with imagined social touch.European journal of social psychology · 2024Article
- Stroking in early mother-infant exchanges: The role of maternal tactile biography and interoceptive sensibility.PloS one · 2024Article
- Multidimensional assessment of time perception along the continuum of Alzheimer's Disease and evidence of alterations in subjective cognitive decline.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Temporal learning in the suprasecond range: insights from cognitive style.Psychological research · 2023Article
- Atypical Response to Affective Touch in Children with Autism: Multi-Parametric Exploration of the Autonomic System.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Article
- Oxytocin but not naturally occurring variation in caregiver touch associates with infant social orienting.Developmental psychobiology · 2022Article
- Affective touch in the context of development, oxytocin signaling, and autism.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Review
- Therapeutic Alliance as Active Inference: The Role of Therapeutic Touch and Synchrony.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- The Significance of Touch in Pediatric Physiotherapy.Frontiers in rehabilitation sciences · 2022Article
- Maternal sensitivity and infant neural response to touch: an fNIRS study.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2021Article
- Social interoception and social allostasis through touch: Legacy of the Somatovisceral Afference Model of Emotion.Social neuroscience · 2021Article
- Motor impulsivity and delay intolerance are elicited in a dose-dependent manner with a dopaminergic agonist in parkinsonian rats.Psychopharmacology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The evaluation of interpersonal touch is heavily influenced by its source. For example, a gentle stroke from a loved one is generally more pleasant than the same tactile stimulation from a complete stranger. Our study tested the early ontogenetic roots of humans' sensitivity to the source of interpersonal touch. We measured the heart rate of three groups of nine-month-olds while their legs were stroked with a brush. The participants were stroked at a different speed in each group (0.3 cm/s, 3 cm/s, 30 cm/s). Depending on the Identity condition (stranger vs. parent), the person who acted as if she was stroking the infant's leg was either an unfamiliar experimenter or the participant's caregiver. In fact, the stimulation was always delivered by a second experimenter blind to the Identity condition. Infants' heart rate decreased more in reaction to strokes when their caregiver rather than a stranger acted as the source of the touch. This effect was found only for tactile stimulations whose velocity (3 cm/s) is known to elicit maximal mean firing rates in a class of afferents named C-tactile fibers (CTs). Thus, the infants' reaction to touch is modulated not just by its mechanical properties but also by its social source.
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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.