ArticleNeuroscience insights2020
Affective Touch: The Enigmatic Spinal Pathway of the C-Tactile Afferent.
Article in Neuroscience insights, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- Touch-based interventions, biofield therapies, and hypnosis for pain management: a scoping review of complementary approaches in physiotherapy.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2026Pooled it
- Clinical Efficacy of Electroacupuncture in the Treatment of Chronic Neck Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial.Journal of pain research · 2025Trial
- Cosmetic after-feel modulates brain activity in sensory and reward networks: an fMRI study.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
- Touch, temperature, and relief: a multilevel integrative model of hedonic regulation in massage and thermal therapies.Frontiers in physiology · 2026Article
- Affective touch sensitivity shapes tingling intensity in autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) experiences.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Article
- Article
- Neural basis of affective touch and pain: A novel model suggests possible targets for pain amelioration.Journal of neuropsychology · 2022Review
- Resilience to stress and social touch.Current opinion in behavioral sciences · 2022Review
- Hearing, touching, and multisensory integration during mate choice.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2022Review
- The brain-body disconnect: A somatic sensory basis for trauma-related disorders.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Review
- Electrically Evoked Itch in Human Subjects.Frontiers in medicine · 2020Review
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
C-tactile afferents are hypothesized to form a distinct peripheral channel that encodes the affective nature of touch. Prevailing views indicate they project, as with other unmyelinated afferents, in lamina I-spinothalamic pathways that relay homeostatically relevant information from the body toward cortical regions involved in interoceptive processing. However, in a recent study, we found that spinothalamic ablation in humans, while profoundly impairing the canonical spinothalamic modalities of pain, temperature, and itch, had no effect on benchmark psychophysical affective touch metrics. These novel findings appear to indicate that perceptual judgments about the affective nature of touch pleasantness do not depend on the integrity of the lamina I-spinothalamic tract. In this commentary, we further discuss the implications of these unexpected findings. Intuitively, they suggest that signaling of emotionally relevant C-tactile mediated touch occurs in an alternative ascending pathway. However, we also argue that the deficits seen following interruption of a putative C-tactile lamina I-spinothalamic relay might be barely perceptible-a feature that would underline the importance of the C-tactile afferent in neurodevelopment.
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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.