Researchers at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience have discovered how consensual touch can improve a person’s physical and mental wellbeing through a large-scale analysis.
Many people are familiar with the comforting sensation of receiving a hug after a tough day or having their shoulder rubbed when feeling low. However, the question remains: can touch truly have a positive impact on one’s emotional state and overall well-being?The Social Brain Lab at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and the University Hospital Essen conducted a comprehensive analysis of touch interventions to examine the effects of touch on mental and physical health, regardless of the source or type of touch.
Research indicates that determining the impact of touch on one’s overall wellbeing is a complex task, as individual studies may only consider specific scenarios and may yield conflicting results. However, when these studies are aggregated for a large-scale analysis, the evidence suggests that touch does indeed have a significant positive effect on both mental and physical health.Touch has the potential to improve the overall wellbeing of individuals, both physically and mentally. It can help reduce pain, anxiety, depression, and stress in adults. Interestingly, those who have physical or mental health issues benefit even more from touch than healthy adults. Packheiser, the first author, points out that this is particularly important given the tendency to overlook touch interventions. Professor Keysers, the director of the Social Brain Lab, emphasizes the need to leverage existing individual studies to determine the most effective type of touch. Additionally, he raises the question of what to do if someone doesn’t have a friend or partner nearby.
Would you be open to receiving a hug? Can physical contact from a stranger or even a machine also provide comfort? And how frequently would you need it? The research clearly indicates that touch can be beneficial, but the most critical components may not be the ones we expect.”
Interestingly, the identity of the person touching you, the manner in which they touch you, and the duration of the touch do not have a significant impact. As a result, a lengthy massage from a therapist may be just as effective as a brief hug from a friend. However, the frequency of the touch intervention must be taken into account. The more frequently touch interventions are provided, the greater the impact. As a result, a brief hug may be even more effective.More frequent touch intervention may be more impactful than a massage.
Human vs. non-human touch?
The next question was whether touch intervention needs to be human at all. It turns out that object or robot interventions can be just as effective at improving physical wellbeing. “Many people are in need of wellbeing improvements, possibly due to loneliness or clinical conditions. These results suggest that a touch-robot, or even a simple weighted blanket, has the potential to help these individuals,” explains last author Frédéric Michon. However, the benefits of robot and object intervention for mental wellbeing may be less effective, particularly for mental health disorders such as anxiety or depression, which may require human touch. Michon suggests that this may indicate the importance of an emotional component associated with touch. The researchers also expressed curiosity about the potential benefits of human-to-animal contact, but studies on this topic are currently lacking. It would be valuable to explore whether an animal’s or pet’s touch could improve wellbeing, as well as whether they also benefit from it. Unfortunately, there is a lack of sufficient studies, or properly controlled ones, on this subject.
“It is difficult to make any broad conclusions about these topics,” Michon explains.
Effects of touch at different ages
When the researchers investigated the effects of touch on infants, they discovered that infants also experienced significant benefits from touch. However, the person delivering the touch intervention was a crucial factor: the benefits of touch were greater when provided by a parent rather than a healthcare worker. “This discovery could have a significant impact,” Packheiser suggests. “In some countries, the death rates of premature babies are high, and the understanding that a baby benefits more from the touch of their own parent provides another easily implementable solution.”Paragraph 1: The study found that maternal touch plays a significant role in the development of premature babies, according to researchers at the Université de Genève and the University of Utah. The findings show that skin-to-skin contact with mothers has a positive impact on the health of premature infants.
Paragraph 2: However, more research is needed to understand the effects of touch on children and teenagers. Large scale studies are important for drawing general conclusions and identifying areas where more research is needed. The hope is that the findings from this study will steer future research to explore lesser-known questions, including the impact of animal touch, touch across different ages, and touch in specific clinical settings such as autistic patients, which has not been extensively explored.
