The DOI matches its Crossref record; 86 of the 86 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Primary somatosensory cortex discriminates affective significance in social touch
Open accessAbstract
Another person’s caress is one of the most powerful of all emotional social signals. How much the primary somatosensory cortices (SIs) participate in processing the pleasantness of such social touch remains unclear. Although ample empirical evidence supports the role of the insula in affective processing of touch, here we argue that SI might be more involved in affective processing than previously thought by showing that the response in SI to a sensual caress is modified by the perceived sex of the caresser. In a functional MRI study, we manipulated the perceived affective quality of a caress independently of the sensory properties at the skin: heterosexual males believed they were sensually caressed by either a man or woman, although the caress was in fact invariantly delivered by a female blind to condition type. Independent analyses showed that SI encoded, and was modulated by, the visual sex of the caress, and that this effect is unlikely to originate from the insula. This suggests that current models may underestimate the role played by SI in the affective processing of social touch.
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“The SI of heterosexual men discriminates between the rewarding experience of being caressed by an attractive woman or the unpleasant feeling of being touched by another man (Gazzola et al, 2012).”
From An oxytocin-induced facilitation of neural and emotional responses to social touch correlates inversely with autism traits (2014) · cites this paper as Gazzola et al, 2012
In the citing paper
“We have replicated previous findings (Gazzola et al, 2012) that heterosexual men perceive touch by an attractive woman as significantly more pleasant than that by a male, and that this is associated with differential responses in the primary SI, despite identical cutaneous stimulation in both cases.”
From An oxytocin-induced facilitation of neural and emotional responses to social touch correlates inversely with autism traits (2014) · cites this paper as Gazzola et al, 2012
Citations
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Metadata
- Authors
- Gazzola, V., Spezio, M. L., Etzel, J. A., Castelli, F., Adolphs, R., & Keysers, C.
- Affiliations
- Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NL)
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- University Medical Center Groningen (NL)
- University of Pavia (IT)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2012-06-04
- Volume
- 109
- Issue
- 25
- Pages
- E1657-66
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC3382530
- OpenAlex
- W2108891685
- Cited by
- 323
- References
- 85
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 25 · 2021: 31 · 2020: 33 · 2019: 21 · 2018: 32 · 2017: 26 · 2016: 23 · 2015: 22 · 2014: 19 · 2013: 17 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 9.67
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- KNAW Research Portal (The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- KNAW research portal (Royal Academy of Art and Sciences (KNAW)) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- European Commission
- Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
- National Institutes of Health
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Tactile and Sensory Interactions
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Multisensory perception and integration
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Keywords
- primary somatosensory cortex, social touch, caress, insula, tactile perception, multisensory integration
- MeSH terms
- Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Somatosensory Cortex, Touch
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