Trial reportSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2019
Effects of opioid receptor stimulation and blockade on touch pleasantness: a double-blind randomised trial.
Trial report in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 2 of them syntheses 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
16 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Endogenous mu-opioid modulation of social connection in humans: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Translational psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- The effect of intranasal oxytocin on social reward processing in humans: a systematic review.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- Endocannabinoid contributions to the perception of socially relevant, affective touch in humans.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Trial
- Effects of dopamine and opioid receptor antagonism on the neural processing of social and nonsocial rewards.Human brain mapping · 2024Trial
- Opioid-blunted cortisol response to stress is associated with increased negative mood and wanting of social reward.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Trial
- Trial
- The effect of intranasal oxytocin on visual processing and salience of human faces.Translational psychiatry · 2020Trial
- Opioid Regulation of Social Homeostasis: Connecting Loneliness to Addiction.Biological psychiatry · 2025Review
- Understanding individual variability in opioid responses: A call to arms.Addiction biology · 2024Article
- Social Psychopharmacology: Novel Approaches to Treat Deficits in Social Motivation in Schizophrenia.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2023Review
- Depression severity is associated with reduced pleasantness of observed social touch and fewer current intimate touch experiences.PloS one · 2023Article
- Beauty and Uncertainty as Transformative Factors: A Free Energy Principle Account of Aesthetic Diagnosis and Intervention in Gestalt Psychotherapy.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
- The role of social isolation in opioid addiction.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2021Article
- Social interoception and social allostasis through touch: Legacy of the Somatovisceral Afference Model of Emotion.Social neuroscience · 2021Article
- The Role of Mu-Opioids for Reward and Threat Processing in Humans: Bridging the Gap from Preclinical to Clinical Opioid Drug Studies.Current addiction reports · 2021Review
- Dopaminergic and opioidergic regulation during anticipation and consumption of social and nonsocial rewards.eLife · 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
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The μ-opioid receptor (MOR) system has long been thought to underpin the rewarding properties of pleasant touch. Numerous non-human animal studies implicate MORs in social behaviours involving touch, but little is currently known about MOR involvement in human touch reward. Here, we employed a bi-directional pharmacological double-blind crossover design to assess the role of the human MOR system for touch pleasantness and motivation. Forty-nine male volunteers received 10 mg per-oral morphine, 50 mg per-oral naltrexone and placebo before being brushed on their forearm at three different velocities (0.3, 3 and 30 cm/s). In a touch liking task, pleasantness ratings were recorded after each 15 s brushing trial. In a touch wanting task, participants actively manipulated trial duration through key presses. As expected, 3 cm/s was the preferred velocity, producing significantly higher pleasantness ratings and wanting scores than the other stimuli. Contrary to our hypothesis, MOR drug manipulations did not significantly affect either touch pleasantness or wanting. The null effects were supported by post hoc Bayesian analyses indicating that the models with no drug effect were more than 25 times more likely than the alternative models given the data. We conclude that μ-opioid signalling is unlikely to underpin non-affiliative touch reward in humans.
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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.