Show 998: The Health Effects of Touch

We don’t always pay attention to our sense of touch, though it is critical to survival. Sensations of pain, heat or cold protect us from injury. But the importance of touch goes far beyond that.

Our sense of touch also provides us with great pleasure. Caress is an essential element of bonding between babies and their parents, and of course it is also part of the pleasure between sexual partners.

Around the world, people refer to chili peppers as hot and mint as cool. These perceptions are rooted in the physiology of touch.

Find out why we can’t tickle ourselves, how the sense of touch contributes to our enjoyment of food, and whether we can nurture our sense of touch.

This Week’s Guest:

David J. Linden, PhD, is a professor in the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is the author of The Accidental Mind, The Compass of Pleasure, and most recently, Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart, and Mind.