Interpersonal touch is frequently used for communicating emotions, strengthen social bonds and to give others pleasure. The neuropeptide oxytocin increases social interest, improves recognition of others' emotions, and it is released during touch. Here, we investigated how oxytocin and gentle human touch affect social impressions of others, and vice versa, how others' facial expressions and oxy...

Most animals can distinguish two distinct types of touch stimuli: gentle (innocuous) and harsh (noxious/painful) touch, however, the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. Caenorhabditis elegans is a useful model for the study of gentle touch sensation. However, little is known about harsh touch sensation in this organism. Here we characterize harsh touch sensation in C. elegans. We sho...

Direct touch input is employed on many devices, but it is inherently restricted to displays that are reachable by the user. Gaze input as a mediator can extend touch to remote displays using gaze for remote selection, and touch for local manipulation but at what cost and benefit? In this paper, we investigate the potential trade-off with four experiments that empirically compare remote Gaze+tou...

The goal of the present study was to develop and validate a measure of touch deprivation. One hundred ninety-eight undergraduate students completed the measure. The measure was shown to be both reliable and accounted for factorial, concurrent, predictive, and criterion validity. Results indicated that touch deprivation was related to several different variables, such as self-esteem and depressi...