Pupil dilation responds to the intrinsic social characteristics of affective touch.

ABSTRACT: Affective Touch is characterized by both emotional and arousing dimensions that rely on specific features of a gentle human caress. In this study, we investigated whether and how both the nature of the touching effector (Human hand vs. Artificial hand) and touch type (Dynamic vs. Static) influenced the participants' pupil dilation and their subjective experience during tactile stimulation. We observed that when participants received a dynamic touch, their pupil dilation increased more when the touch was produced by a human compared to an artificial hand. This discrimination was not present for static touch. Also, dynamic touch given by a human hand invoked a supralinear enhancement of pupil dilation indicating that the combination of these two features induced a stronger autonomic activati

SUBMITTER: Bonino G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11484950 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature