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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Sep 22, 2025

Using Facial Electromyography to Assess Facial Muscle Reactions to Experienced and Observed Affective Touch in Humans
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Social Touch Somatotopically Affects Mental Body Representations.

Viviana Rojo Martinez1, Yasmine Giovanola1, Silvio Ionta1

  • 1Sensory-Motor Lab (SeMoLa), Department of Ophthalmology-University of Lausanne, Jules Gonin Eye Hospital-Fondation Asile des Aveugles, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Neuroscience
|May 22, 2022
PubMed
Summary

Social touch, like holding another person's thumb, speeds up mental hand image rotation compared to objectual touch. This indicates social touch specifically impacts local body representations, not global ones.

Keywords:
body imagebody schemamental imagerymotor cognitionsensorimotor

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Social Psychology

Background:

  • Daily interactions often involve social touch, distinct from objectual touch.
  • The mental representation of one's own body may be influenced by the nature of tactile input.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if social touch affects mental body representations differently than objectual touch.
  • To determine if tactile input influences local (hand) versus global (body) mental representations.

Main Methods:

  • 30 neurotypical participants performed mental rotation of hand, full body, and foot images.
  • Tactile conditions included holding a person's thumbs (social touch) or plastic cylinders (objectual touch).

Main Results:

  • Mental rotation of hand images was faster during social touch compared to objectual touch.
  • This effect was specific to hands, not affecting full body or foot image rotation.

Conclusions:

  • Social touch influences local, somatotopically specific (hand-related) mental body representations.
  • External social factors can modulate internal mental body representations, differentiating sensorimotor and visuospatial dynamics.