feel immediate relief, neuroscientists have found in what they say is the first
study of how human touch affects the neural response to threatening situations.
The soothing effect of touch could be seen in scans of
areas deep in the brain that are involved in registering emotional and physical
alarm.
The women received significantly more relief from
their husbands' touch than from a stranger's, and those in particularly close
marriages were most deeply comforted by their husbands, the study found.
The findings help explain one of the longest-standing
puzzles in social science: why married men and women are healthier on average
than their peers. Husbands and wives who are close tend to limit each other's
excesses like drinking and smoking but not enough to account for their better
health compared with singles, researchers say.
“This is very imaginative, cutting-edge science, linking this complex
response to stress to different areas of the brain,” said Dr. Ronald Glaser,
director of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at Ohio State
University, who was not involved in the study.
In the study, to appear in the journal
Psychological Science this year, neuroscientists at the University of
Wisconsin and the University of Virginia used newspaper advertisements to
recruit 16 couples from the Madison, Wis., region. The couples were all rated as
very happily married on an in-depth questionnaire asking about coping styles,
intimacy and mutual interests.
Lying in the jaws of an MRI scanning machine and
knowing that they would periodically receive a mild electric shock to an ankle,
the women were noticeably apprehensive. Brain images showed peaks of activation
in regions involved in anticipating pain, heightening physical arousal and
regulating negative emotions, among other systems.
But the moment that they felt their husbands' hands –
the men reached into the imaging machine – each woman's activity level plunged
in all the regions gearing up for the threat. A stranger's hand also provided
some comfort, though less so.
“The effect of this simple gesture of social support
is that the brain and body don't have to work as hard, they're less stressed in
response to a threat,” said Dr. James Coan, a psychologist at the University of
Virginia and the study's lead author. His co-authors were Dr. Hillary Schaefer
and Dr. Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin.
Relaxing in the face of a perceived threat is not
always a good idea, however. The brain's alarm system, which prompts the release
of stress hormones that increase heart rate and move blood to the muscles,
prepares people to fight or run for their lives, researchers say.
But this system often becomes overactive in situations
that are nagging but not life-threatening, such as worries over relationships,
deadlines, money or homework. Easy access to an affectionate touch in these
moments “is a very good thing, is deeply soothing,” Coan said.
The most profoundly comforting hand-holding was
between “super couples,” whose scores on the marriage questionnaire reflected a
extremely close relationship, the study found. The brain region involved in
anticipating pain was particularly sensitive to this marital quality, suggesting
that a touch between close partners can blunt the sensation of physical pain,
which is related to the level of anticipation.
All of which also explains why the withdrawal or
absence of affectionate touch can be so upsetting. In research published late
last year, Glaser and his wife, Dr. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, reported that
blisters lingered longer during marital strife.
And rejection, the ultimate withdrawal of touch,
registers in the brain much like an ankle shock, said Dr. Lucy Brown, a
neuroscientist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Fear of the shocks
activated a region in the brain “that we saw activated in people looking at a
beloved who had recently rejected them,” Brown wrote.
“Love has its risks,” she added. “It can make us very
unhappy,” too.