ArticleCurrent opinion in behavioral sciences2022
The role of the amygdala in processing social and affective touch.
Article in Current opinion in behavioral sciences, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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
19 citing papers in PubMed, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- Weakening of Subcortical and Strengthening of Cortical Visual Pathways Across Early Adolescence.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- Review
- Therapeutic Touch in the Human Validation Process Model: A Reflexive Thematic Analysis.Journal of marital and family therapy · 2026Article
- An fNIRS hyperscanning dataset on the modulation of synchrony by social relationship during social touch.Scientific data · 2025Article
- A circuit from the basolateral amygdala to hippocampal CA3 regulates social behavior.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- Differential brain activation and network connectivity in social interactions presence and absence of physical contact.Communications biology · 2025Article
- The Impact of Task Context on Pleasantness and Softness Estimations: A Study Based on Three Touch Strategies.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Social touch deprivation during the COVID-19 pandemic and reduced well-being.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Linking Adult Olfactory Neurogenesis to Social Reproductive Stimuli: Mechanisms and Functions.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Relationship between central autonomic effective connectivity and heart rate variability: A Resting-state fMRI dynamic causal modeling study.NeuroImage · 2024Article
- Article
- Amygdala and Cortex Relationships during Learning of a Sensory Discrimination Task.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Virtual social grooming in macaques and its psychophysiological effects.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Intense Body Contact Increases Homosexual Pair Bond Stability in Female Japanese Macaques (Macaca fuscata).Archives of sexual behavior · 2024Article
- MDMA modulates human sensorimotor cortical pathways during gentle touch.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2024Article
- Anxiety and depression: A top-down, bottom-up model of circuit function.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2023Review
- Article
- Atypical Response to Affective Touch in Children with Autism: Multi-Parametric Exploration of the Autonomic System.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Article
- Dynamic influences on the neural encoding of social valence.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The amygdala plays a central role in emotion and social behavior, yet its role in processing social and affective touch is not well established. Longitudinal studies reveal that touch-deprived infants show later in life exaggerated emotional reactivity related to structural and functional changes in the amygdala and other brain structures. The internal organization and connectivity of the amygdala is well-suited to process the sensory features of tactile stimuli and also the socio-cognitive dimensions of the received touch. The convergent processing of bottom-up and top-down pathways that carry information about touch results in the elaboration of context appropriate autonomic responses. Indeed, the positive value of affective touch in humans and social grooming in non-human primates is correlated with vagal tone and the release of oxytocin and endogenous opioids. Grooming, the non-human primate equivalent of affective touch in humans, reduces vigilance, that depends on the amygdala. During touch-induced vagal tone and low vigilance, neural activity in the amygdala is substantially different from activity corresponding to the attentive processing of tactile stimuli. Under these circumstances neurons no longer respond phasically to each touch stimulus, rather they signal a sustained functional state in which the amygdala appears decoupled from monitoring the external environment.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.