Touching to connect, explore, and explain: how the human brain makes social touch meaningful

ABSTRACT Human touch has an enormous power to engender and mediate meaning in the human mind, from the emotional to the pragmatic, and from the linguistic to the symbolic. Can a functional-neuroanatomical perspective on social touch contribute to a general understanding of the biological workings of such meaning-making? I argue here that it can, and that the ways the brain accomplishes this are manifold. I identify and explore three main neural subsystems which operate in concert to generate the emotional and semantic complexion of social touch. These subsystems underlie how humans: 1) touch to connect with others; 2) explore the physical and social worlds; and 3) explain the significance of a touch within our own knowledge and experience, especially with regard to the way we interpret the world through language and culture. I therefore propose that what makes social touch meaningful has much to do with the functional and evolutionary roots of these brain subsystems. Although they can be distinguished and analyzed, in the “wild” human brain these subsystems are functionally intertwined, and their processes are integrated to generate a unified subjective experience of social touch. This view also acknowledges the intertwined nature of the embodied individual within society, thus carrying potential implications for theoretical analysis in such terms.