Topic: tactile sensory processing

Differences in tactile sensory processing and social interaction have been reported in the autistic population. Here, we investigated two aspects of interpersonal touch: the pleasantness of being touched and the interpretation of social touch. We used a set of six naturalistic touch expressions, communicating happiness, sadness, attention, calming, love, and gratitude. We recruited participants from the local community or online and divided them into self-reported autistic and neurotypical groups. They completed a touch communication task, and a pleasantness rating task, either in-person or on

The primary somatosensory area of the mammalian cerebral cortex is known to play a key role in tactile sensory processing and touch perception, which may not be restricted to an efficient analysis of the incoming sensory flow. Indeed, the neocortex is thought to be capable of generating predictions about future events based on the context, our past experiences and current motor actions. According to predictive coding theories, sensory perception would rely on the continuous comparison of expected sensory inputs with those actually received, and the error signal generated in case of mismatch be