Ricerc@Sapienza

Touch is the first sensory system to develop and its fundamental role in the human development has been demonstrated in several evolving pathways, from biological growth to psychological maturity, to social skills achievements. This issue has a long background, from the historical studies of the Harlow¿s monkeys, to the milestone evidence proposed by Bowlby, to the recent researches of tactile modulations in psychopathology. Here, we use a new neuroscientific paradigm, the Affective Touch (AT), to study the implications of the hedonic touches on the Attachment Styles.
AT is a behavioral response to the stimulation of the hairy skin; it is usually perceived as a pleasant touch, similar to a caress. McGlone described a neurophysiological system that mediates AT, called CT fibers, a population of low-threshold mechanoreceptive afferents activated by subjectively rated pleasant stroking velocities (1 to 10 cm/s). Several studies showed that AT is impaired in psychiatric pathologies, mainly in personality disorders. Also, it has been hypostasized that AT could be modulated by the attachment style. Accordingly, the aim of this project is to explore the effect of the attachment style in the perception of AT. We will administer the Adult Attachment Interview and the AT protocol to a sample of healthy participants; we expect to find that the attachment styles affect the level of pleasantness evoked by the AT. We predict that, given the social and emotional function of AT and the affective difficulties exhibited by persons with a disorganized attachment, the perception of touch pleasantness would be reduced in people with disorganized attachment. By combining psychophysical and psychological data we will provide new data on the somatosensory processes underlying attachment styles and on some basic tactile mechanisms underlying psychopathological dimensions in which the processing of interpersonal information is impaired, opening the door to possible novel treatments.