The DOI matches its Crossref record; 85 of the 85 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Neurobiology Shaping Affective Touch: Expectation, Motivation, and Meaning in the Multisensory Context
Open accessAbstract
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 to interact with the toucher, the affective experience of the same touch may be flipped to disgust. While a broad literature has addressed, on one hand the neurophysiological basis of ascending touch pathways, and on the other hand the central neurochemistry involved in touch behaviors, investigations of how external context and internal state shapes the hedonic value of touch have only recently emerged. Here, we review the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms responsible for the integration of tactile "bottom-up" stimuli and "top-down" information into affective touch experiences. We highlight the reciprocal influences between gentle touch and contextual information, and consider how, and at which levels of neural processing, top-down influences may modulate ascending touch signals. Finally, we discuss the central neurochemistry, specifically the μ-opioids and oxytocin systems, involved in affective touch processing, and how the functions of these neurotransmitters largely depend on the context and motivational state of the individual.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
How do you feel — now? The anterior insula and human awareness
(Bud) Craig, A. D. (2009) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn2555 · Cited by 6,657 · cited 1×
“…these regions play central roles in hedonic valuation more generally, in the monitoring and updating of expectation, and the integration of available relevant information (Craig, 2009; McDannald et al., 2011; Schoenbaum et al., 2011; Roy et al., 2012; Lebreton et al., 2015; Lindquist et al., 2015).”
BackgroundCentral sensitization: implications for the diagnosis and treatment of pain
Woolf, C. J. (2011) · Pain · doi:10.1016/j.pain.2010.09.030 · Cited by 4,771
Porges, S. W. (2007) · Biological Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2006.06.009 · Cited by 3,415
Heinrichs, M., Baumgartner, T., Kirschbaum, C., & Ehlert, U. (2003) · Biological Psychiatry · doi:10.1016/s0006-3223(03)00465-7 · Cited by 2,091
Oxytocin Modulates Neural Circuitry for Social Cognition and Fear in Humans
Kirsch, P., Esslinger, C., Chen, Q., Mier, D., Lis, S., Siddhanti, S., Gruppe, H., Mattay, V. S., Gallhofer, B., & Meyer-Lindenberg, A. (2005) · The Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.3984-05.2005 · Cited by 1,639
Social effects of oxytocin in humans: context and person matter
Bartz, J. A., Zaki, J., Bolger, N., & Ochsner, K. N. (2011) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2011.05.002 · Cited by 1,581 · cited 2×
“Similar to the effects of MOR system manipulations, the behavioral effects of oxytocin administration seem to vary across contexts and affective states (Bartz et al., 2011).”
BackgroundPlacebo and Opioid Analgesia-- Imaging a Shared Neuronal Network
Petrovic, P., Kalso, E., Petersson, K. M., & Ingvar, M. (2002) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1067176 · Cited by 1,488
Object perception as Bayesian inference
Kersten, D., Mamassian, P., & Yuille, A. (2004) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.142005 · Cited by 1,269
Lending a Hand: Social Regulation of the Neural Response to Threat
Coan, J. A., Schaefer, H. S., & Davidson, R. J. (2006) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01832.x · Cited by 1,218
Changes in brain activity related to eating chocolate: From pleasure to aversion
Small, D. M. (2001) · Brain · doi:10.1093/brain/124.9.1720 · Cited by 1,179 · cited 3×
“When being touched by another individual, inferences about the identity, physical characteristics, and the intentions of the toucher, conveyed through visual and auditory stimuli, gives useful information about the importance of the touch and how preferable it is (Suvilehto et al., 2015).”
Background
Cited by
Social touch and human development
Cascio, C. J., Moore, D., & McGlone, F. (2019) · Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2018.04.009 · Cited by 503
Brain-to-brain coupling during handholding is associated with pain reduction
Goldstein, P., Weissman-Fogel, I., Dumas, G., & Shamay-Tsoory, S. G. (2018) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1703643115 · Cited by 311
Keep Calm and Cuddle on: Social Touch as a Stress Buffer
Morrison, I. (2016) · Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology · doi:10.1007/s40750-016-0052-x · Cited by 256
Enhance placebo, avoid nocebo: How contextual factors affect physiotherapy outcomes
Testa, M., & Rossettini, G. (2016) · Manual Therapy · doi:10.1016/j.math.2016.04.006 · Cited by 256
The sudden devotion emotion: Kama muta and the cultural practices whose function is to evoke it
Fiske, A. P., Seibt, B., & Schubert, T. (2019) · Emotion Review · doi:10.1177/1754073917723167 · Cited by 138
Metadata
- Authors
- Ellingsen, D.-M., Leknes, S., Løseth, G., Wessberg, J., & Olausson, H.
- Venue
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2016-01-06
- Volume
- 6
- Pages
- 1986-1986
- ISSN
- 1664-1078 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2226376337
- Cited by
- 202
- References
- 85
- FWCI
- 9.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Neurobiology Shaping Affective Touch: Expectation, Motivation, and Meaning in the Multisensory Context. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01986
- The paper
- Ellingsen, D.-M., Leknes, S., Løseth, G., Wessberg, J., & Olausson, H. (2016). The Neurobiology Shaping Affective Touch: Expectation, Motivation, and Meaning in the Multisensory Context. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01986
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
