Synchrony of Caresses: Does Affective Touch Help Infants to Detect Body-Related Visual–Tactile Synchrony?

Bodily self-awareness, that is the ability to sense and recognize our body as our own, involves the encoding and integration of a wide range of multisensory and motor signals. Infants’ abilities to detect synchrony and bind together sensory information in time and space critically contribute to the process of gradual bodily self-awareness. In particular, early tactile experiences may have a crucial role in promoting self-other differentiation and developing bodily self-awareness. More specifically affective touch, slow and gentle touch linked to the neurophysiologically specialized system of C-tactile afferents, provides both information about the body from within (interoception) and outside (exteroception), suggesting it may be a key component contributing to the experience of bodily self-awareness. The present study aimed to investigate the role of affective touch in the formation and modulation of body perception from the earliest stages of life. Using a preferential looking task, 5-month-old infants were presented with synchronous and asynchronous visuo–tactile body-related stimuli. The socio-affective valence of the tactile stimuli was manipulated by means of the velocity [CT-optimal (slow) touch vs. CT-suboptimal (fast) touch] and the source of touch (human hand vs. brush). For the first time, we show that only infants that were stroked using a brush at slow velocity displayed a preference for the visual–tactile synchronous video, suggesting that CT-optimal touch might help infants to detect body-related visual–tactile synchrony, independently from the source of touch. Our results are in line with findings from adults and indicate that affective touch might have a critical role in the early development of bodily self-awareness

Interpersonal Affective Touch in a Virtual World: Feeling the Social Presence of Others to Overcome Loneliness

Humans are by nature social beings tuned to communicate and interact from the very beginning of their lives. The sense of touch represents the most direct and intimate channel of communication and a powerful means of connection between the self and the others. In our digital age, the development and diffusion of internet-based technologies and virtual environments offer new opportunities of communication overcoming physical distance. It however, happens that social interactions are often mediated, and the tactile aspects of communication are overlooked, thus diminishing the feeling of social presence, which may contribute to an increased sense of social disconnection and loneliness. The current manuscript aims to review the extant literature about the socio-affective dimension of touch and current advancements in interactive virtual environments in order to provide a new perspective on multisensory virtual communication. Specifically, we suggest that interpersonal affective touch might critically impact virtual social exchanges, promoting a sense of co-presence and social connection between individuals, possibly overcoming feelings of sensory loneliness. This topic of investigation will be of crucial relevance from a theoretical perspective aiming to understand how we integrate multisensory signals in processing and making sense of interpersonal exchanges, this is important in both typical and atypical populations. Moreover, it will pave the way to promising applications by exploring the possibility to use technical innovations to communicate more interactively in the case of people who suffer from social isolation and disconnection from others

In touch with the heartbeat: newborns\u2019 cardiac sensitivity to affective and non-affective touch

The sense of touch is the first manner of contact with the external world, providing a foundation for the development of sensorimotor skills and socio-affective behaviors. In particular, affective touch is at the core of early interpersonal interactions and the developing bodily self, promot- ing the balance between internal physiological state and responsiveness to external environment. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether newborns are able to discriminate between affective touch and non-affective somatosensory stimulations and whether affective touch promotes a positive physiological state. We recorded full-term newborns\u2019 (N = 30) heart rate variability (HRV)\u2014which reflects oscillations of heart rate associated with autonomic cardio-respiratory regulation\u2014while newborns were presented with two minutes of affective (stroking) and non-affective (tapping) touch alternated with two minutes of resting in a within-subject design. The results revealed that non- affective touch elicits a decrease in HRV, whereas affective touch does not result in a change of HRV possibly indicating maintenance of calm physiological state. Thus, newborns showed cardiac sensitivity to different types of touch, suggesting that early somatosensory stimulation represents scaffolding for development of autonomic self-regulation with important implications on infant\u2019s ability to adaptively respond to the surrounding social and physical environment

The development of a flexible bodily representation: behavioural outcomes and brain oscillatory activity during the Rubber Hand Illusion in preterm and full-term school-age children

During childhood, the body undergoes rapid changes suggesting the need to constantlyupdate body representation based on the integration of multisensory signals. Sensoryexperiences in critical periods of early development may have a significant impact onthe neurobiological mechanisms underpinning the development of the sense of one\u2019sown body. Specifically, preterm children are at risk for sensory processing difficulties,which may lead to specific vulnerability in binding together sensory information in orderto modulate the representation of the bodily self. The present study aims to investigatethe malleability of body ownership in preterm (N= 21) and full-term (N= 19) school-agechildren, as reflected by sensitivity to the Rubber Hand Illusion. The results revealedthat multisensory processes underlying the ability to identify a rubber hand as beingpart of one\u2019s own body are already established in childhood, as indicated by a highersubjective feeling of embodiment over the rubber hand during synchronous visual-tactilestimulation. Notably, the effect of visual-tactile synchrony was related to the suppressionof the alpha band oscillations over frontal, central, and parietal scalp regions, possiblyindicating a greater activation of somatosensory and associative areas underpinning theillusory body ownership. Moreover, an interaction effect between visual-tactile conditionand group emerged, suggesting that preterm children showed a greater suppressionof alpha oscillatory activity during the illusion. This result together with lower scoresof subjective embodiment over the rubber hand reported by preterm children indicatethat preterm birth may affect the development of the flexible representation of the body.These findings provide an essential contribution to better understand the processesof identification and differentiation of the bodily self from the external environment, inboth full-term and preterm children, paving the way for a multisensory and embodiedapproach to the investigation of social and cognitive development

Emotion Recognition in Preterm and Full-Term School-Age Children

Children born preterm (<37 weeks’ gestation) show a specific vulnerability for socio-emotional difficulties, which may lead to an increased likelihood of developing behavioral and psychiatric problems in adolescence and adulthood. The accurate decoding of emotional signals from faces represents a fundamental prerequisite for early social interactions, allowing children to derive information about others’ feelings and intentions. The present study aims to explore possible differences between preterm and full-term children in the ability to detect emotional expressions, as well as possible relationships between this ability and socio-emotional skills and problem behaviors during everyday activities. We assessed 55 school-age children (n = 34 preterm and n = 21 full-term) with a cognitive battery that ensured comparable cognitive abilities between the two groups. Moreover, children were asked to identify emotional expressions from pictures of peers’ faces (Emotion Recognition Task). Finally, children’s emotional, social and behavioral outcomes were assessed with parent-reported questionnaires. The results revealed that preterm children were less accurate than full-term children in detecting positive emotional expressions and they showed poorer social and behavioral outcomes. Notably, correlational analyses showed a relationship between the ability to recognize emotional expressions and socio-emotional functioning. The present study highlights that early difficulties in decoding emotional signals from faces may be critically linked to emotional and behavioral regulation problems, with important implications for the development of social skills and effective interpersonal interactions

The self-regulatory affective touch: a speculative framework for the development of executive functioning

Sensitive periods soon after birth seem to be crucial for mapping brain networks and enable the development of healthy sensory responses in adulthood. Affective tactile experiences are at the core of interpersonal interactions in the neonatal period and represent a scaffolding for early development of autonomic self-regulation, which then becomes part of more complex patterns of social exchanges and executive functions across the first years of life. In the present article we reviewed recent studies that investigated physiological and behavioural responses to tactile stimulations across development, supporting our claim that affective touch is an essential part of early emerging self-regulatory skills with important cascade effects on infants’ socio-emotional and cognitive developmental trajectories

Reduced motor planning underlying inhibition of prepotent responses in children with ADHD

To flexibly regulate their behavior, children's ability to inhibit prepotent responses arises from cognitive and motor mechanisms that have an intertwined developmental trajectory. Subtle differences in planning and control can contribute to impulsive behaviors, which are common in Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and difficult to be assessed and trained. We adapted a Go/No-Go task and employed a portable, low-cost kinematic sensor to explore the different strategies used by children with ADHD or typical development to provide a prepotent response (dominant condition) or inhibit the prepotent and select an alternative one (non-dominant condition). Although no group difference emerged on accuracy levels, the kinematic analysis of correct responses revealed that, unlike neurotypical children, those with ADHD did not show increased motor planning in non-dominant compared to dominant trials. Future studies should investigate whether motor control could help children with ADHD compensate for planning difficulties. This strategy might make inhibition harder in naturalistic situations that involve complex actions. Combining cognitive and kinematic measures is a potential innovative method for assessment and intervention of subtle differences in executive processes such as inhibition, going deeper than is possible based on accuracy outcomes alone

Psychophysiological and visual behavioral responses to faces associated with affective and non-affective touch in four-month-old infants

Affective touch (gentle, caress-like touch) carries a rewarding meaning, which may represent a neurophysiological foundation for the development of social interactions from the earliest stages of life. Developmentalstudies have shown evidence of infants\u2019 sensitivity to affective touch as reflected by a decrease in heart rate andactivation of the insular cortex. Moreover, affective touch has been shown to regulate infants\u2019 emotional state, reinforce eye contact and facilitate learning of facial information, suggesting that affective touch may promotesocial functioning from the earliest stages of development. The present study aims to investigate the role of affective touch in enhancing engagement with social stimuli, exploring sustained attention and cardiac responses tofaces as signatures of the underlying psychophysiological mechanism. Four-months-old infants (N= 40) wererepeatedly presented with a female face paired with touch (hand stroking vs tapping with a brush in two differentblocks) alternating with a face presented without tactile stimulation (familiarization phase), followed by a visualpreference test between the two faces. Our results revealed an attenuated cardiac response in the affective compared to the non-affective condition during the familiarization phase. During the test phase infants looked longerat both the faces presented in the affective touch condition, compared to the faces in the non-affective condition.These findings suggest that affective touch might promote engagement in social interactions by facilitating physiological state regulation during processing of multisensory social information

Adaptive Cognitive Control in Prematurely Born Children: An HD-EEG Investigation

Preterm birth is a neurodevelopmental risk condition often associated with cognitive control (CC) impairment. Recent evidence showed that CC can be implicitly adapted through associative learning. In the present study we investigated the ability to flexibly adjust CC as a function of implicit stimulus-response temporal regularities in preterm (PT; N = 21; mean age 8 ± 1.3 years; gestational age 30 ± 18.5 weeks) and full-term (FT; N = 20; mean age 8 ± 1.3 years) school-age children. All children underwent an HD-EEG recording while undergoing the Dynamic Temporal Prediction (DTP) task, a simple S1-S2 detection task purposely designed to generate local-global temporal predictability of imperative stimuli. The Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST) was administered to measure explicit CC. The PT group showed more premature and slower (DTP) as well as perseverative (WCST) responses than the FT group. Moreover, pre-terms showed poor adaptive CC as revealed by less efficient global response-speed adjustment. This behavioral pattern was mirrored by a reduced and less sensitive to global manipulation anticipatory Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) and by different cortical source recruitment. These findings suggest that implicit CC may be a reliable endophenotypic marker of atypical cognitive development associated with preterm birth