The brain’s response to pleasant touch: An EEG investigation of tactile caressing
Somatosensation as a proximal sense can have a strong impact on our attitude toward physical objects and other human beings. However, relatively little is known about how hedonic valence of touch is processed at the cortical level. Here we investigated the electrophysiological correlates of affectiv...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/59196 |
| _version_ | 1848760411268055040 |
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| author | Singh, H. Bauer, M. Chowanski, W. Sui, Y. Atkinson, Doug Baurley, S. Fry, M. Evans, J. Bianchi-Berthouze, N. |
| author_facet | Singh, H. Bauer, M. Chowanski, W. Sui, Y. Atkinson, Doug Baurley, S. Fry, M. Evans, J. Bianchi-Berthouze, N. |
| author_sort | Singh, H. |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Somatosensation as a proximal sense can have a strong impact on our attitude toward physical objects and other human beings. However, relatively little is known about how hedonic valence of touch is processed at the cortical level. Here we investigated the electrophysiological correlates of affective tactile sensation during caressing of the right forearm with pleasant and unpleasant textile fabrics. We show dissociation between more physically driven differential brain responses to the different fabrics in early somatosensory cortex – the well-known mu-suppression (10–20 Hz) – and a beta-band response (25–30 Hz) in presumably higher-order somatosensory areas in the right hemisphere that correlated well with the subjective valence of tactile caressing. Importantly, when using single trial classification techniques, beta-power significantly distinguished between pleasant and unpleasant stimulation on a single trial basis with high accuracy. Our results therefore suggest a dissociation of the sensory and affective aspects of touch in the somatosensory system and may provide features that may be used for single trial decoding of affective mental states from simple electroencephalographic measurements. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T10:15:21Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-59196 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T10:15:21Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | Frontiers in Human Neuroscience |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-591962018-02-13T02:18:21Z The brain’s response to pleasant touch: An EEG investigation of tactile caressing Singh, H. Bauer, M. Chowanski, W. Sui, Y. Atkinson, Doug Baurley, S. Fry, M. Evans, J. Bianchi-Berthouze, N. Somatosensation as a proximal sense can have a strong impact on our attitude toward physical objects and other human beings. However, relatively little is known about how hedonic valence of touch is processed at the cortical level. Here we investigated the electrophysiological correlates of affective tactile sensation during caressing of the right forearm with pleasant and unpleasant textile fabrics. We show dissociation between more physically driven differential brain responses to the different fabrics in early somatosensory cortex – the well-known mu-suppression (10–20 Hz) – and a beta-band response (25–30 Hz) in presumably higher-order somatosensory areas in the right hemisphere that correlated well with the subjective valence of tactile caressing. Importantly, when using single trial classification techniques, beta-power significantly distinguished between pleasant and unpleasant stimulation on a single trial basis with high accuracy. Our results therefore suggest a dissociation of the sensory and affective aspects of touch in the somatosensory system and may provide features that may be used for single trial decoding of affective mental states from simple electroencephalographic measurements. 2014 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/59196 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00893 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Frontiers in Human Neuroscience fulltext |
| spellingShingle | Singh, H. Bauer, M. Chowanski, W. Sui, Y. Atkinson, Doug Baurley, S. Fry, M. Evans, J. Bianchi-Berthouze, N. The brain’s response to pleasant touch: An EEG investigation of tactile caressing |
| title | The brain’s response to pleasant touch: An EEG investigation of tactile caressing |
| title_full | The brain’s response to pleasant touch: An EEG investigation of tactile caressing |
| title_fullStr | The brain’s response to pleasant touch: An EEG investigation of tactile caressing |
| title_full_unstemmed | The brain’s response to pleasant touch: An EEG investigation of tactile caressing |
| title_short | The brain’s response to pleasant touch: An EEG investigation of tactile caressing |
| title_sort | brain’s response to pleasant touch: an eeg investigation of tactile caressing |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/59196 |