Researchers uncover neuronal circuitry tuned to rewarding forms of social touch, opening leads for harnessing touch as a treatment of social and emotional disorders. A parent’s reassuring touch. A friend’s warm hug. A lover’s enticing embrace. These are among the tactile joys in our lives. Now
Scientists at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute and two partner institutions have identified previously unknown starting points in the neurobiological pathways related to pleasurable, sexual, and rewarding social touch in mouse studies. They were able to identify a full pathway that starts in the skin’s neurons responding to gentle stroking and ends in the pleasure centers of the brain.
“From the start, this project had high-risk/high-reward written all over it,” said Ishmail Abdus-Saboor, PhD, a Principal Investigator atZuckerman Institute and corresponding author on the paper. “We just kept following the data to where it took us.” “We weren’t sure this picture of social touch was quite right,” said Dr. Abdus-Saboor, who is also an assistant professor of biological sciences at Columbia. “We set out to test whether there might be tactile neurons specifically tuned for rewarding touch.”, who studied a class of sensory cells, dubbed Mrgprb4 cells after a receptor in their membranes. The scientists found these cells to be responsive to light strokes.
“We saw that by activating this understudied population of tactile sensory cells in the mouse’s back that the animals would lower their backs and take on this posture of dorsiflexion,” said Dr. Elias. In the world of rodents, such a posture is a key signature of sexual receptivity, which normally requires the physical attention of a suitor mouse.
“This was the first documented example that a specific behavior might be generated or supported by these Mrgprb4 neurons,” Dr. Abdus-Saboor said.
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