February 14, 2023
Valentine’s Day is a perfect opportunity to spend time with your sweetheart. Holding hands, embracing each other, massaging each other… you’re spoiled for choice when it comes to showing your love through physical contact. Did you know that researchers have identified nerve cells dedicated to the pleasure felt during caresses?
A reassuring caress, holding hands, a hug or a more sensual hug. When it’s in a benevolent way, of course, being touched is one of the pleasures of life. American researchers from Zuckerman Institute from Columbia have uncovered the existence of nerve cells located on the skin that are exclusively dedicated to feeling the happiness provided by caresses.
A separate nerve circuit
To reach this conclusion, they worked on rodent models on which they used an optogenetic technique. This method consists “to introduce into a cell a gene that codes for a photosensitive protein, which will activate when it is illuminated with a specific light “, explains Inserm. In this specific case, the researchers made sure that only the cells called Mrgprb4 trigger when they hit them with a light beam. Fascinating result: “Mice arch backwards, in a posture associated in this species with being receptive to sexual arousal”. Proof that the caress provoked a response via these cells.
Scientists then discovered that there were not only dedicated cells but also an exclusive nerve path for the message of caresses. This one leading directly to the pleasure zone in the brain.
A therapeutic way against stress?
And in humans then? Humans happen to have similar nerve cells called C-tactile afferents, that respond to caresses, even light ones. And that a nerve pathway to the brain also exists, not so different from that of the mouse.
This opens the way to biomedical applications with the pleasure felt by the caress as medicine. In effect, “it may be possible to develop techniques to treat stress, anxiety and depression, either with touch therapies or with new drugs to be applied to the skin,” explain the authors. Along with stress and anxiety, these findings could also lead to solutions in autism, which sometimes makes being touched totally unbearable.