Inter-individual touch can be a desirable reward that can both relieve negative affect and
evoke strong feelings of pleasure. However, if other sensory cues indicate it is undesirable …

Highlights•Social, affective regulation, including through touch, is multidimensional.•Social
touch appears to have three interrelated functions in affective regulation.•Social touch …

Highlights•Perception is inherently multisensory, and tactile perception is no
exception.•Sensory-discriminative and affective touch influenced by other senses.•To date …

Comforting touch involves contact distress-alleviating behaviors of an observer towards the
suffering of a target. A growing number of studies have investigated the effects of touch on …

The pleasantness of gentle stroking (CT-targeted touch) varies highly between individuals
and studies, indicating that relevant factors may not be accounted for. We propose that the …

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 …

Although the previous studies have shown that an emotional context may alter touch
processing, it is not clear how visual contextual information modulates the sensory signals …

Emotionally‐laden tactile stimulation—such as a caress on the skin or the feel of velvet—
may represent a functionally distinct domain of touch, underpinned by specific cortical …

The multimodal properties of the human somatosensory system continue to be unravelled.
There is mounting evidence that one of these submodalities—touch—has another …

Being touched by another person influences our readiness to empathize with and support
that person. We asked whether this influence arises from somatosensory experience, the …