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50 shades of touch

Disgusting or delighting, exciting or boring, sensual or expected, no matter what you think about it, 50 Shades of Grey is certainly not a movie that passes by without leaving a mark on your skin. Based on E.L. James’ novel (honestly, somehow even more breathtaking than the movie), it tells the story of the complicated relationship between the dominant multi-millionaire Christian Grey, and the newly graduated, inexperienced, and shy, Ana Steele. Christian leads Ana towards his sensuous and deviant world (though, who really does take the lead is unclear), made of ropes, riding crops, chains, and strict rules. Since the first time I saw the movie, and when I read the book, I could not help but think about the sense of touch, the main object of my scientific research into the neurocognitive mechanisms of human perception, emotions, and desires. After all, isn’t the novel about the sensual power of touch? How arousing can a light touch on the neck be? A kiss to the hair? And what about the constriction of rope around your wrists? I was reflecting about where this incredible power comes from, and here my research can help.

We now know that human bodies have a privileged path to pleasure, one that passes through the sense of touch: CT fibers. These neural fibers conduct information to the brain from the non-glabrous areas of the body (from those body parts with hairs) and are activated by a caress like stimulus. They must signal comfort and pleasure to our brain, which reacts accordingly. This system is probably an inheritance from our monkey-like ancestors, social animals that used to groom one another, also as a way to set their reciprocal status (dominance) within the group. However, touch is much more than that; it also contributes to the release of hormones, oxytocin in particular, the bonding (or cuddle, as popularly defined) hormone. From a scientific point of view, touch actually sets the pace of a relationship, as there is evidence regarding the presence of a strong correlation between the level of blood oxytocin, the amount of touch within a couple, and the quality of their relationship as rated by the couple.

The two main characters in the novel seem to be attracted towards one another by a magnetic force, which pushes their bodies towards unexplored limits. Another important function of touch is actually to set the limits of our body, to define what is ‘us’ and what is not. Not surprisingly, in the last few years, discussion on the neural substrates of ‘body ownership’ has become very popular among cognitive neuroscientists. That is, how our brains can define which body parts do and don’t belong to us. “Where our touch begins, so do we,” I often tell my students at university, and when someone touches us, we lose a bit of this limit; we become part of the other person.

Undeniably, the novel is also about the relationship between dominance and submission; about the question of who is really in charge. However, what really is the difference between these two aspects? Isn’t the sense of touch the real leader in this situation too? Who can touch? When? How? Where? We can watch and hear, but we cannot touch someone without consent. In the author’s second novel, 50 Shades Darker, the ‘untouchable’ Christian asks Ana to use a red lipstick to draw on his chest a map of body areas that she is allowed to touch and areas that are off-limits. Again I’m led to wonder, is touch really that powerful? Scientific research provides a positive answer to this question. Touch has been shown to affect people’s compliance towards a request, their willingness to give more, and their desire to please someone. A number of researchers have shown that people are much more willing to say yes to a request if they are touched first.

The Oculus Rift,. A 2013 virtual reality headset from Oculus VR, a company Facebook acquired in 2014 for $2 billion. By Sebastian Stabinger. CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Finally, 50 Shades of Grey is also about the boundaries between pleasure and pain. Many people may wonder why some individuals are willing to receive corporal punishments by someone they love (and even take pleasure from it). More generally, how can a ‘spank’ be perceived as pleasant? The answer to these kind of questions certainly has much to do with the ‘reward neural circuits’, buried in some of the deepest and evolutionarily oldest parts of our brain. No one would perceive pain as pleasant when out of the right context. Just as other sensations, pain is a creation of the brain; as a colleague of mine is often heard saying: ‘no brain, no pain’, and I’m inclined to agree. Many stimulations in the brain interact to determine the perception of pain, and touch certainly takes an important role in this modulation of sensations. Sensual touch is a strong reward, and the brain can lead you everywhere in order to get its reward. Even pain under these conditions can become pleasant.

It’s interesting to consider the same novel without so much reference to touch, and even more interestingly, how our lives might be without tactile sensations. How might our relationships be? These thoughts lead me to think about another aspect relevant to my research: human-machine interfaces. Modern technology, if it continues to be effective, will need to use touch, especially in order to reproduce social interactions. Virtual reality in particular will have limited use without the capability to reproduce realistic connections between our bodies and objects, and/or between people’s bodies (being them real on just computer-generated). Here, I have a specific scene from the movie in mind, the one where Christian uses an ice cube to arouse Ana (admittedly a very often-adopted image in fictional erotic scenes). The effect is strong, and its visual impact intuitive. How can technology reproduce something similar? The sensation of wetness on the skin is certainly a very complex one. From a neuroscientific point of view, it requires the activation of at least two classes of receptors: one for temperature; the other for movement over the skin. Without this mixture of neural signals (and the brain’s interpretation of them) we cannot get such a sensation, just as when you do not feel your body wet while lying completely still in a bathtub full of hot water. So how can these sensations be reproduced artificially? Every time I think about these aspects, I can’t help but think about what a huge challenge this is. Will technology ever be able to get even close? Will touch through interfaces become possible between two people separated by miles? I want to be positive, but in order to get there, researchers will need to increase their study into the powerful and still mysterious sense of touch, in all its 50 (and more) shades.

As a neuroscientist, and a man who is hypnotized by the magic behind that sense, I am definitely thrilled about what we will learn in the future regarding the brain mechanisms responsible for tactile sensations!

Featured image: “Shades of Gray” By AnonMoos. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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