title: Gentle touch perception across the lifespan.
abstract: Pleasant, affective touch provides various health benefits, including stress and depression relief. There is a dichotomy between mechanoreceptive afferents that predominantly signal discriminative (myelinated A-beta) and affective (unmyelinated C-tactile) aspects of touch. It is well documented that discriminative abilities of touch decline with age. However, a thorough investigation of how the pleasant aspects of touch develop with age has not been previously attempted. Here, we investigated the relationship between age and psychophysical ratings in response to gentle stroking touch. One hundred twenty participants (60 males, 60 females) ages 13-82 years were presented with C-tactile optimal and suboptimal stroking velocities, and rated pleasantness and intensity. Moreover, to examine the specificity of age effects on touch perception, we used olfactory stimuli as a cross-sensory comparison. For all ages, we found that C-tactile optimal stimuli were rated significantly more pleasant than C-tactile suboptimal stimuli. Although, both touch and olfactory intensity ratings were negatively correlated with age, a positive correlation between pleasantness ratings of touch (but not olfactory stimuli) and age was found. We conclude that the affective, but not the discriminative, aspects of touch are enhanced with increasing age. The increase of pleasantness of all touch stimuli in late adulthood is discussed in relation to cognitive modulations.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, University of Gothenburg.
authors.forename: Isac
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-9737-5612
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Sehlstedt
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, University of Gothenburg.
authors.forename: Hanna
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ignell
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, University of Gothenburg.
authors.forename: Helena
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Backlund Wasling
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, University of Gothenburg.
authors.forename: Rochelle
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ackerley
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Linköping University.
authors.forename: Håkan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Olausson
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Linköping University.
authors.forename: Ilona
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Croy
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009812:Odorants; D055696:Olfactory Perception / Q000502:physiology; D057181:Pleasure; D011601:Psychophysics; D014110:Touch; D055698:Touch Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult