The fact that we do feel different when we are caressed when compared to a normal touch has always bafled scientists all over, and finally the wise men have been able to figure out why a loving touch make us feel special.
Scientists have recently found that tender caresses stimulate a different part of the nervous system than that activated by the everybody sensation of touch. It has long been suspected that there are a few special nerves in our body that are involved in transmitting information to the brain when the skin is touched in a passionate way, but no one could clearly pinpoint the reason.
Now it has been proved that there is a nerve that can feel the “emotional touch” as these touches generate different responses, with the help of a 54 year old Swedish woman who has no normal sense of touch due to an illness that prevented her myelinated afferent fibres from functioning properly.
In the different tests that were conducted with her help, it was seen that she couldn’t feel the movement of any probes on her body, nor was she able to tell which direction the probe was moving. But when her arm was stroked gently with a paintbrush, mimicking the tender touch of a lover, she could feel a slight, but pleasant sensation. It was later found that these touches could be felt because of a set of touch fibres known as CT afferents. This was also confirmed by carrying a brain scan on different subjects.
This slow touch system does not signal what we mean by touch in daily life. Instead it signals the pleasant aspects that can be evoked by touch stimulation. Sometimes it’s strange what we can feel when we are in love, especially when we consider that there are aspects within our body that make us want to fall in love and help us in heightening the pleasure of the different touches that we yearn to feel, when we are in love.