Neuroscience Graduate Group, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA; Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA. Electronic address: https://twitter.com/@leahthePhDya.
Neuroscience Graduate Group, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA; Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2022 Apr;73:102527. doi: 10.1016/j.conb.2022.102527. Epub 2022 Apr 19.
Social touch-the affiliative skin-to-skin contact between individuals-can rapidly evoke emotions of comfort, pleasure, or calm, and is essential for mental and physical well-being. Physical isolation from social support can be devastating. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we observed a global increase in suicidal ideation, anxiety, domestic violence, and worsening of pre-existing physical conditions, alerting society to our need to understand the neurobiology of social touch and how it promotes normal health. Gaining a mechanistic understanding of how sensory neuron stimulation induces pleasure, calm, and analgesia may reveal untapped therapeutic targets in the periphery for treatment of anxiety and depression, as well as social disorders and traumas in which social touch becomes aversive. Bridging the gap between stimulation in the skin and positive affect in the brain-especially during naturally occurring social touch behaviors-remains a challenge to the field. However, with advances in mouse genetics, behavioral quantification, and brain imaging approaches to measure neuronal firing and neurochemical release, completing this mechanistic picture may be on the horizon. Here, we summarize some exciting new findings about social touch in mammals, emphasizing both the peripheral and central nervous systems, with attempts to bridge the gap between external stimulation and internal representations in the brain.
社会触摸——个体之间的亲和性皮肤接触——可以迅速唤起舒适、愉悦或平静的情绪，是身心健康所必需的。与社会支持的身体隔离可能是毁灭性的。在 COVID-19 大流行期间，我们观察到全球自杀意念、焦虑、家庭暴力和先前存在的身体状况恶化的情况增加，这提醒社会我们需要了解社会触摸的神经生物学以及它如何促进正常健康。深入了解感觉神经元刺激如何引起愉悦、平静和镇痛，可能会揭示外周未开发的治疗靶点，用于治疗焦虑和抑郁，以及社会障碍和创伤，在这些障碍和创伤中，社会触摸变得令人厌恶。弥合皮肤刺激和大脑积极情绪之间的差距——尤其是在自然发生的社会触摸行为期间——仍然是该领域的一个挑战。然而，随着小鼠遗传学、行为量化和脑成像方法的进步，这些方法可用于测量神经元放电和神经化学物质释放，完成这种机械图景可能即将实现。在这里，我们总结了一些关于哺乳动物社会触摸的令人兴奋的新发现，强调了外周和中枢神经系统，并试图弥合大脑中外在刺激和内部表现之间的差距。
