Abstract
Research has revealed a special mechanoreceptor, called C-tactile (CT) afferent, that is situated in hairy skin and that seems relevant for the processing of social touch. We pursued a possible role of this receptor in the perception of other social signals such as a person’s voice. Participants completed three sessions in which they heard surprised and neutral vocal and nonvocal sounds and detected rare sound repetitions. In a given session, participants received no touch or soft brushstrokes to the arm (CT innervated) or palm (CT free). Event-related potentials elicited to sounds revealed that stroking to the arm facilitated the integration of vocal and emotional information. The late positive potential was greater for surprised vocal relative to neutral vocal and nonvocal sounds, and this effect was greater for arm touch relative to both palm touch and no touch. Together, these results indicate that stroking to the arm facilitates the allocation of processing resources to emotional voices, thus supporting the possibility that CT stimulation benefits social perception cross-modally.
Highlights
Research has revealed a special mechanoreceptor, called C-tactile (CT) afferent, that is situated in hairy skin and that seems relevant for the processing of social touch
We expected CT touch to modulate two event-related potential (ERP) components previously associated with emotion recognition and social perception
The interaction of Emotion and Voiceness showed as a tendency, F(1, 17) = 3.51, p = .078, ηG2 = .005, but follow-up test for vocal (p > .250) and nonvocal sounds (p = .102) were nonsignificant
Summary
Research has revealed a special mechanoreceptor, called C-tactile (CT) afferent, that is situated in hairy skin and that seems relevant for the processing of social touch. The late positive potential was greater for surprised vocal relative to neutral vocal and nonvocal sounds, and this effect was greater for arm touch relative to both palm touch and no touch Together, these results indicate that stroking to the arm facilitates the allocation of processing resources to emotional voices, supporting the possibility that CT stimulation benefits social perception cross-modally. Patients without Aβ afferents but intact CT afferents may experience a vague sense of pleasure from the stroking of CT-innervated skin despite being unable to properly discriminate the tactile sensation (Olausson et al, 2002) Based on these findings, CT afferents have been proposed to underpin the affective and rewarding qualities of touch in social interactions (McGlone, Wessberg, & Olausson, 2014; Olausson et al, 2008; Olausson et al, 2002). The integration of different stimulus dimensions and of stimulus with contextual information is linked to this component (Diéguez-Risco, Aguado, Albert, & Hinojosa, 2013; Schirmer & Gunter, 2017)
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