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Affective Touch Enhances Self-Face Recognition During Multisensory Integration

Multisensory integration is a powerful mechanism for constructing body awareness and key for the sense of selfhood. Recent evidence has shown that the specialised C tactile modality that gives rise to feelings of pleasant, affective touch, can enhance the experience of body ownership during multisen...

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Autores principales: Panagiotopoulou, Elena, Filippetti, Maria Laura, Tsakiris, Manos, Fotopoulou, Aikaterini
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5635121/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29018230
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-13345-9
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author Panagiotopoulou, Elena
Filippetti, Maria Laura
Tsakiris, Manos
Fotopoulou, Aikaterini
author_facet Panagiotopoulou, Elena
Filippetti, Maria Laura
Tsakiris, Manos
Fotopoulou, Aikaterini
author_sort Panagiotopoulou, Elena
collection PubMed
description Multisensory integration is a powerful mechanism for constructing body awareness and key for the sense of selfhood. Recent evidence has shown that the specialised C tactile modality that gives rise to feelings of pleasant, affective touch, can enhance the experience of body ownership during multisensory integration. Nevertheless, no study has examined whether affective touch can also modulate psychological identification with our face, the hallmark of our identity. The current study used the enfacement illusion paradigm to investigate the role of affective touch in the modulation of self-face recognition during multisensory integration. In the first experiment (N = 30), healthy participants were stroked on the cheek while they were looking at another face being stroked on the cheek in synchrony or asynchrony with affective (slow; CT-optimal) vs. neutral (fast; CT-suboptimal) touch. In the second experiment (N = 38) spatial incongruence of touch (cheek vs. forehead) was used as a control condition instead of temporal asynchrony. Overall, our data suggest that CT-optimal, affective touch enhances subjective (but not behavioural) self-face recognition during synchronous and spatially congruent integration of different sensations and possibly reduces deafference during asynchronous multisensory integration. We discuss the role of affective touch in shaping the more social aspects of our self.
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spelling pubmed-56351212017-10-18 Affective Touch Enhances Self-Face Recognition During Multisensory Integration Panagiotopoulou, Elena Filippetti, Maria Laura Tsakiris, Manos Fotopoulou, Aikaterini Sci Rep Article Multisensory integration is a powerful mechanism for constructing body awareness and key for the sense of selfhood. Recent evidence has shown that the specialised C tactile modality that gives rise to feelings of pleasant, affective touch, can enhance the experience of body ownership during multisensory integration. Nevertheless, no study has examined whether affective touch can also modulate psychological identification with our face, the hallmark of our identity. The current study used the enfacement illusion paradigm to investigate the role of affective touch in the modulation of self-face recognition during multisensory integration. In the first experiment (N = 30), healthy participants were stroked on the cheek while they were looking at another face being stroked on the cheek in synchrony or asynchrony with affective (slow; CT-optimal) vs. neutral (fast; CT-suboptimal) touch. In the second experiment (N = 38) spatial incongruence of touch (cheek vs. forehead) was used as a control condition instead of temporal asynchrony. Overall, our data suggest that CT-optimal, affective touch enhances subjective (but not behavioural) self-face recognition during synchronous and spatially congruent integration of different sensations and possibly reduces deafference during asynchronous multisensory integration. We discuss the role of affective touch in shaping the more social aspects of our self. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-10-10 /pmc/articles/PMC5635121/ /pubmed/29018230 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-13345-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Panagiotopoulou, Elena
Filippetti, Maria Laura
Tsakiris, Manos
Fotopoulou, Aikaterini
Affective Touch Enhances Self-Face Recognition During Multisensory Integration
title Affective Touch Enhances Self-Face Recognition During Multisensory Integration
title_full Affective Touch Enhances Self-Face Recognition During Multisensory Integration
title_fullStr Affective Touch Enhances Self-Face Recognition During Multisensory Integration
title_full_unstemmed Affective Touch Enhances Self-Face Recognition During Multisensory Integration
title_short Affective Touch Enhances Self-Face Recognition During Multisensory Integration
title_sort affective touch enhances self-face recognition during multisensory integration
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5635121/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29018230
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-13345-9
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