Mapping the Emotional Body

Researchers studying neurons that respond to gentle touch reveal that people find strokes on another person's back and shoulder more pleasurable than strokes to the forearm and hand.

Written byJef Akst

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Penfield’s iconic sensory homunculus depicts the representation of discriminative touch in somatosensory cortex.SUSANNAH WALKER AND FRANCIS MCGLONE

Human skin has two different ways of perceiving its environment: through relatively large, fast discriminative touch nerve fibers that detect objects and through smaller, unmyelinated C fibers that are typically associated with itch or touch. “One is about sensing the world and the other is about feeling,” Susannah Walker of Liverpool Johns Moores University in the U.K. told The Scientist today (November 17) at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) conference in Washington, DC.

One type of C fiber, known as C-tactile afferents (CTs) is specifically dedicated to the sensation of gentle touch, responding most strongly to strokes around 3 to 10 centimeters/second. In mice, these fibers are found to be most dense on the back and upper extremities, with fewer CTs found on the lower ...

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
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Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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