Why Some Touches Make Our Skin Crawl, California Institute of Technology Study

From affectionate handholding to unwelcome touches, our brains process physical contact according to its emotional context, researchers say. Interested in how the brain makes connections between touch and emotion, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have discovered that the association begins in the brain’s primary somatosensory cortex, a region that, until now, was thought only to respond to basic touch, not to its emotional quality.