Ackerley Rochelle, Saar Karin, McGlone Francis, Backlund Wasling Helena
Department of Physiology, University of Gothenburg Gothenburg, Sweden ; Clinical Neurophysiology, Sahlgrenska University Hospital Gothenburg, Sweden ; School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University Liverpool, UK.
Clinical Neurophysiology, Sahlgrenska University Hospital Gothenburg, Sweden.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2014 Feb 11;8:34. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00034. eCollection 2014.
The perception of touch is complex and there has been a lack of ways to describe the full tactile experience quantitatively. Guest et al. (2011) developed a Touch Perception Task (TPT) in order to capture such experiences, and here we used the TPT to examine differences in sensory and emotional aspects of touch at different skin sites. We compared touch on three skin sites: the hairy arm and cheek, and the glabrous palm. The hairy skin contains C-tactile (CT) afferents, which play a role in affective touch, whereas glabrous skin does not contain CT afferents and is involved in more discriminative touch. In healthy volunteers, three different materials (soft brush, sandpaper, fur) were stroked across these skin sites during self-touch or experimenter-applied touch. After each stimulus, participants rated the tactile experience using descriptors in the TPT. Sensory and emotional descriptors were analyzed using factor analyses. Five sensory factors were found: Texture, Pile, Moisture, Heat/Sharp and Cold/Slip, and three emotional factors: Positive Affect, Arousal, and Negative Affect. Significant differences were found in the use of descriptors in touch to hairy vs. glabrous skin: this was most evident in touch on forearm skin, which produced higher emotional content. The touch from another was also judged as more emotionally positive then self-touch, and participants readily discriminated between the materials on all factors. The TPT successfully probed sensory and emotional percepts of the touch experience, which aided in identifying skin where emotional touch was more pertinent. It also highlights the potentially important role for CTs in the affective processing of inter-personal touch, in combination with higher-order influences, such as through cultural belonging and previous experiences.
触觉感知十分复杂,一直缺乏定量描述完整触觉体验的方法。Guest等人(2011年)开发了一种触觉感知任务(TPT)来捕捉此类体验,在此我们使用TPT来研究不同皮肤部位触觉在感官和情感方面的差异。我们比较了三个皮肤部位的触觉:有毛发的手臂和脸颊,以及无毛的手掌。有毛发的皮肤含有C触觉(CT)传入神经,其在情感触觉中起作用,而无毛皮肤不含有CT传入神经,参与更具辨别性的触觉。在健康志愿者中,在自我触摸或实验者施加触摸时,用三种不同材料(软刷、砂纸、皮毛)划过这些皮肤部位。每次刺激后,参与者使用TPT中的描述词对触觉体验进行评分。使用因子分析对感官和情感描述词进行分析。发现了五个感官因子:质地、绒毛、湿度、热/刺痛和冷/滑,以及三个情感因子:积极情感、唤醒和消极情感。在触摸有毛发皮肤与无毛皮肤时描述词的使用上发现了显著差异:这在前臂皮肤的触摸中最为明显,其产生了更高的情感内容。来自他人的触摸在情感上也被判断为比自我触摸更积极,并且参与者能够在所有因子上轻松区分不同材料。TPT成功地探究了触觉体验的感官和情感感知,这有助于识别情感触觉更相关的皮肤部位。它还强调了CTs在人际触摸的情感处理中与更高层次影响(如通过文化归属和以往经历)相结合的潜在重要作用。