Instant Genius - Why touch is our most misunderstood sense, with Prof Michael Banissy

Episode Date: July 9, 2023

Would you call yourself a bit of a hugger? Or does the mere thought of a stranger brushing past you in a cafe make your skin crawl? When it comes to being touched, we all have our own attitudes and opinions. But what can science tell us about this understudied and often misunderstood sense? In this episode we catch up with Prof Michael Banissy, a social neuroscientist based at Goldsmiths University in London and author of the new book When we Touch. He tells us all about the fascinating discoveries he has made about everything from the effects of mother’s skin-to-skin contact on a new born’s growth and development to the boost in performance sports team’s get when they regularly hit high fives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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a bite-sized master class in podcast four. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor at BBC Science Focus magazine. Would you call yourself a bit of a hard, hugger, or does the mere thought of a stranger brushing by you in a cafe make your skin crawl? When it comes to being touched, we all have our own attitudes and opinions. But what can science tell us about this understood and often misunderstood sense? In this episode, we catch up with Professor Michael Bannessy, a social neuroscientist based

at Goldsmith's University in London, an author of the new book, When We Touch. He tells us all about the fascinating discoveries he's made about everything from the effects of mother's skin-to-skin contact on a newborn's growth and development, to the boost in performance sports teams get when they regularly hit high fives. So first off, you're a social neuroscientist. So that's a really interesting title. So can you tell us a bit about what that is, what you do, what that means? Yeah, so in short, being a social neuroscientist means that I play with brains for a living,

which are living brains, I should say. So I do lots of things like brain scanning, experiments, and also behavioral experiments where you bring people into the lab and you run these tasks. But we also do studies in the real world. And all of those studies really revolve around how we interact with other people, so how we socially interact and how we build bonds in our relationships and how we maintain those throughout our lives and the impact that those relationships can have on things like our health and our well-being.

And so I study the psychology behind that as well as the neuroscience, as well as the kind of what's going on in our brain. And when we experience these types of social interactions, be that empathy, be that touch, be that, you know, all sorts of different things, really. So you mentioned there touch. So that's the topic of today's interview about your new book, which is all about touch. Really fascinating.

I think the first place to start here then is, what do we know about what's happening in our bodies when we are touched by someone? Yeah. So this kind of depends, depending slightly on a type of touch. that we're receiving. So in a very simplistic time, let's say, I don't know, for instance, if you were wading at a train station and someone taps you on the shoulder, that type of scenario that could happen to any of us every day, I suppose. What's happening there is you've got

receptors in your skin that are picking up that experience, and they're sending signals to a few regions in the brain. One of the ones that is commonly viewed as one of the most important is the somatocensory cortex. So this is a brain region, which if you happen to wearing headphones right now and you've got one of the bands on your head. It's almost where that headband would be for your headphones. So almost just above your ear, really, a few centimeters up. And the somatosensory cortex is pretty much like the mail room for touch. So whenever you feel touch on your body, sends a signal to that brain region. And in that brain region, you've got all sorts of specific body representations. So what I mean by that is you've got a body map. So just like we've

got a body in the real world, legs, feet, etc. Your somatosensory cortex is built up in such a way that it has an area that responds if you're touched on your feet, an area that responds if you're touched on your face and so forth. And actually, these body maps in the somatosensory cortex look a little bit different to the way we look in the real world. You know, something like our face and our hands, they have much bigger representations because we use those a lot when we touch, right? We need fine discrimination there compared to something like our belly, I don't know, that looks really quite small in the somatosensory cortex. So if you happen to ever kind of Google this and you look at something like the somatosensory homunculus, you'll see these rather strange,

slightly monstrous-looking creatures. And that's what we would look like if we look like our bodies represented in our brain. So that's one side of touch. The other side to it, of course, is that we might also think about not just touch where someone taps us on the shoulder and it's a stranger, but maybe I don't know where our partner gives us a hug or a family member gives us a hug or someone strokes our arm very gently in a caring way. And actually, when that happens, you know, it's true, you do recruit the somatosensory cortex in those scenarios, but you also recruit a slightly wider brain network. And in fact, actually in our skin, we have dedicated receptors that respond to things like

slow, gentle stroking. So those kind of comforting forms of touch. We have receptors in our skin, specialized to detect these. And when they're activated, they send signals to our brain to areas like the somatosensory cortex, but they also activate parts of the brain that are involved in processing rewards. So things like, you know, we might find food rewarding. We might find money rewarding. We might find other than sex rewarding.

Well, touch, comforting touch, we also, our brain finds that rewarding. And some of this also then leads to the release of hormones, hormones that are involved in the experience of rewards, hormones like dopamine, sometimes called a feel-good hormone, but also other hormones. So hormones like oxytocin. And oxytocin is a hormone that's involved in calming us and building bonds and building trust with other people. and it's for reasons like this, which I guess we may well talk about, that touch can often

have benefits to our stress and our well-being. Yeah, so that was a fantastic introduction. Let's go right back then. Perhaps not surprisingly, I would say, as you detail in your book, our sense of touch develops surprisingly early, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, incredibly early. In fact, you know, if you look into things like the third trimester during pregnancy, very early on, there's evidence that the developing kind of fetus will respond, you know, to touch. You know, it could be for exploration if you're kind of touching the mother's stomach, as it were. But it can also be, there's been studies where, you know, if babies are born premature, you can then look at responsiveness to touch. And you do see this very early on. And really touch is

one of these amazing senses, I think, because it's with us from the very first moments of our life. Some people say it's the first sense to develop. But it's also, when you think about it, one of the last senses that also goes, it's with us from that first moment right the way until the end. But of course, the interesting thing throughout that in our lives is it becomes increasingly complicated maybe after we're born, which is all the nuances that come with touch as well. Yeah, so I was talking about newborns or very young babies anyway. Of course, you know, they're unable to speak. They can't really communicate. So you'd think surely the sense of touch is probably the most important one that they have. Yeah, I mean, I personally, I think it's really important. I mean, it's definitely been shown, you know, certainly very early on that, you know, engaging in care. given forms of touch with newborns can have really positive effects on things like their response

to, let's say, painful situations. So in those scenarios, they might show less crying. Particularly in premature babies, actually, it's been shown that things like gentle pressure massage, or skin-to-skin contact, that tactile connection. That leads to things like shorter hospital stays, increased weight gain. So there's a lot of evidence showing very early on that it's really important on a kind of health and well-being side. But it also matters, certainly in early life, for how the baby begins to learn and understand the world around them. So, you know, often they're exploring through touch. They're putting objects near their face. You know, they're using that. So that's how they shape and understand and arguably might build a sense of self out of that. But also even

something as simple as having, I don't know, a parent or a caregiver, gently stroke a baby while they're, I don't know, watching or seeing emotion, seeing an emotional scene, that can change how they respond to it. There was one study showing if you gently stroke a baby and they're in a situation where there's maybe some angry or some scary faces, they're almost less likely to be scared by them and more likely to learn from the situation than a baby who's not. So there's all these kind of nuances that kick in as well. So one thing I got from reading the book was you would think, you know, perhaps yeah, we know these early developmental things. Yeah, perhaps that's, you know, that's, intuitive or whatever, but they can have very long-lasting consequences, can't they?

Yeah, no, absolutely. And this is often actually seen in situations where sadly there's maybe a lack of touch. So there's been some really harrowing stories that have come out at different times. Well-known case connects to children who were kind of effectively had a deprivation of touch and what impact that has. And you see there that the impact there can have impacts on not just how their social skills and their social world develops, but also other things like memory and learning, and those effects can carry forward for a number of years. So that has been seen there. Another example, which is maybe slightly less extreme, but it was a study that came out only a couple of years ago now. And this was a study that effectively compared premature babies

that were born and were able to be touched, premature babies that were born and cared for without immediate touch after birth and babies that were born full term and they had touch with a caregiver. And what they did in this study was they tracked these three different groups over 20 years. And they looked throughout those 20 years at the amount of behavioral synchrony. So when caregivers and the child were interacting as they grew up, how in sync were they? And they found those that were touched early on had more synchrony with the caregiver. But they also found that even 20 years later, if you put it, those kids, well now adults, if you put them in a brain scanner and you look to what happens

when they see somebody else having negative emotions and you looked at the kind of empathic brain regions that become active, you saw that those that had more touch earlier on in their lives and had more social synchrony with their caregiver, they showed greater brain response in terms of empathy responses to others. So all these effects that maybe we don't immediately think about but can carry forward. Another topic I'd like to touch on is genes, this idea, of epigenetics and how that makes a difference. That isn't absolutely fascinating. Can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah, so this is very much a developing field. I should caveat whatever I say with that. And that, you know, it's, so epigenetics is effectively, it's the study of how our genes maybe are

turned on or off, the types of factors that can impact that. And there is now ongoing work looking at how whether or not you have early caregiving touch or the type of the frequency or the amount of it, the quality of it, and how does that have an impact on things like immune system function and metabolic function? And some of the early work is showing actually caregiving contact. And that could be skin to skin holding, that could be someone stroking, a stroking an arm, you've arranged a tactile behaviours. But those early caregiving contacts can have an impact as an epigenetic factor on genes that are involved in things like regulating metabolic function and immune function as people age. We need to see how well that replicates worldwide. A lot of this

work, I should say, has been done often in the US, so we have to be mindful of that and we have to see how that builds. But it's, it just adds to that picture, right, of the fact that touch early on appears to be incredibly important to us as humans. So you talk a lot about different types of touch and different experiences of touch, which I'm sure we'll get into in a bit. But you talk about something called pleasant touch. So what exactly is that? And what do we know about how we experience it? Yeah, so pleasant touch, to a degree, as the name implies, is a touch, I guess, that has, that we find pleasant and enjoyable. It's a touch that has a kind of emotional context to it, but it's a context that actually is one that we would think fondly of. So the way this is actually

commonly been studied is by looking at people having their arms gently stroked because, you know, the majority of people find that a pleasant experience. You know, there are some people that won't and, you know, there's obviously in that case, it's not pleasant touch for obvious reasons. But what happens if you experience pleasant touch is you see this kind of activation, particularly for that slow, gentle stroking of what we call CT afference. And these are receptors in our skin that are particularly sensitive to detecting things like slow, gentle stroking. You know, I should say there are other forms attached. It can be pleasant, of course, that don't activate those. I don't know. Something like a hug may not necessarily. But if you're getting

slow, gentle stroking, and that's the form we're talking about, then that's you tend to see that. And of course, if you find that experience pleasant, then what you see is you don't only activate brain mutins like the same at a sensory system, but you activate this wider brain network involved in things like social rewards, so you find that touch rewarding, and you see the release of hormones that are really important, like those involved in bonding, calmness, and, you know, other wider kind of experiences of positive mood, for instance. So you mentioned there hugging, so I'd like to go now into talking about different kinds of touch. And in all honesty, it's something that I never really thought about. There's lots of different ways that we touch one another or even ourselves.

But let's have a look through those. So hugging is a really interesting. more I think because some people, they'll be like, they'll call themselves, oh, I'm sorry, I'm a bit of a hugger. Yeah. It's common, right, isn't it? So what do we know about that? You know, why do we do it? You know, can you do it for different, you do it for different reasons to console someone or to celebrate something? It's really interesting. Yeah, hundreds of different reasons why we might hug, right? It could be a greeting. It could be to show sympathy, care for someone, could be to show support. it could also have more of a sinister twist to it as well. We can't discount that.

There's all sorts of reasons why someone might engage in touch. Certainly when hugs are meant to be supportive or when they're viewed as supportive, then they can have incredibly powerful effects. And I have to be honest, I was really surprised just how powerful they are, just a bit like you, really. It wasn't, you know, hugs for me were something that, oh, I like the feel of them, but I never really thought much more beyond that. But actually, the science is stacking up now just to show that,

Engaging in hugs that are supportive can have huge benefits to things like how we respond to stressful situations, to how our kind of, even how our immune system responds. So to give you a couple of concrete examples, so one of the studies on stress that I find really interesting was a study that came out a couple of years ago, which effectively had people giving a public talk, do mental maths out loud. Might not sound stressful for some, but for me, that's pretty terrifying, right? before they did this, they either were hugged by someone, they either gave themselves a hug, or they self-soothed. They might not have hug, they might strike their arm, or they had no touch at all. And then what happened was the scientists remeasureed things like cortisol. So cortisol is a hormone involved in stress response, and they had self-reported stress as one, and they wanted to see what happens in this stressful scenario. And what they found was that being hugged

by somebody else, but also even hugging yourself, led to a lowered stress response, which is a really nice message, I think, particularly in a world where maybe we won't have someone around to hug us, that if we engage in supportive hugs even to ourselves, maybe that can help. But it's not the only example. There's a number of studies now showing that hugs can impact stress response. It's been shown now in different scientists across different decades have shown this. But with immune system, this is now building more and more. So there was a really nice study again that came out. It was in the kind of mid-2010s. And this study was actually with adults in the Pittsburgh area in the US. And basically what the researchers did was they measured for 14 days.

They just asked people to keep a diary. And in that diary, one of the things they mentioned was how often did they have a hug? Very simple. You know, how often was it happening? They then brought these people into the lab after those 14 days and they exposed them to a virus. And I'm kind of pleased these people did the study because I certainly wouldn't have signed up for it. But they were given a cold effectively. And they were quarantined and the researchers just kind of,

and monitored, how did the virus develop, how did the cold develop? And what they found was that the people who were hugged more for the 14 days before, and that's a really important point, because of course if you are sick and you start hugging someone, you might pass your germs on. So 14 days before, being hugs more often meant that those people were less likely to develop some of the virus symptoms. So in short, more hugs, less virus development in that particular case. And who would have thought that, right? I mean, when you're having a hug every day in your life, typically, you're probably not thinking, oh, this might help me fight off a cold, should it come my way? But there's more and more data building like that. I mean, that's not the only study. There's been more recent work

coming out of the University of Arizona on this. So that was one of the things. Certainly, in writing the book, I started to go around and think a bit more about how many hugs am I getting, how many hugs am I giving? You become much more mindful of it, I suppose, once you pick up on this stuff. No one goes to Hank's for spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately, though, The shop's been quiet, so Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks Copilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs and help him see if he can afford it. Co-Pilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the dollar slice work.

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Try it for yourself at a focal powered by name boutique. Visit focal powered by name.com for more information. Yeah, so coming off the back of that is something that I'd never heard of called Cuddle Therapy. Yeah. So that maybe sounds not, I don't mean to demean it, it sounds maybe something like the care bears would do or something. But what's the idea behind that? Yeah, I mean, so Cuddle therapy, I mean, this is ultimately, I mean, for there are some people who, you know, they really struggle to get touch in their lives and they may not, or even if they've got people around them, perhaps those people don't provide the touch and the support that they need. And so cuddle therapy is literally, it's people who are trained effectively to hug.

And they run these very, you know, it's a professional and relaxed and safe setting where there's all sorts of discussions beforehand and choices of even some of them they don't actually touch at all. Sometimes it's just talking about touch, right, in these scenarios. But the idea is actually it gives people that space to explore touch that maybe they might be lacking in a safe environment and receive hugs from a trained professional. There's less, I must admit, there's less data currently on whether it does or doesn't have the beneficial effects, but based on the wider literature,

based on the fact that we know things like hugs and touch, supportive touch can be beneficial for things like health and wellbeing. That's the reason why people are trying to explore it. But it just feeds in also to a wider topic, which is actually more and more these days. People are saying they're touch hungry. They're saying they don't get enough touch in their lives. And, you know, actually before the pandemic, it was around about 54% of people that were saying that.

That's what we found in a big worldwide survey that we did of about 40,000 people. But as we went through that, up to about 80% of people were reporting they weren't getting enough touch in their lives. And now the data's coming in. It's maybe getting a bit more balanced out, but it's still incredibly high. So this for me is a really worrying trend because we know that touch is important. We know it has this really powerful impact on so many aspects of our lives, the stuff we've spoken about, but also other things, like even how teams will work together, how good they work together, or how much we view the quality of our relationships and things like this.

But more and more of us are starting to say we feel that we're not getting enough. And that raises a question of how can we bring that into people's lives more? Cardal therapy is one option. It might not be everybody's cup of tea. But there's other things, you know, as we spoke already, something like a self-soothing hug to yourself can bring touch into your life and help you. So there's a diversity of ways where you can get benefits from touch. And I think that's quite important for people who currently lack it.

Yeah, so you mentioned that. That's something I was going to, like obviously the last few years, it's been a bit rough, you know, with the COVID-19 pandemic, and a lot of us have been alone. And I remember reading that study and finding it really interesting at the time. So what do we know about the effects that had on not only mental health, but physical health? Yes. I mean, I think now we're seeing more.

data coming out on how particularly during the COVID lockdowns there was this kind of, I guess it was a spike in terms of people's longing for touch. They were, people were, you know, much more kind of lacking touching their lives and reporting that. And that may sound intuitive to many of us, because I think often it wasn't sometimes until something's taken away, you realize just how much it means to you, right? And even myself as a touch scientist, I'd noticed it much more, I think, during those lockdowns than anything else. But the impacts on that, I mean, some of the impacts have been connected to things like changes in anxiety, stress levels, negative impacts there.

And there are some differences in that as well that came out depending on different individual, I suppose individual difference factors came out as well. So for instance, some people were affected more than others. So some of us, we have different attachment styles in our relationships. And so what was coming out of this data particularly is shown, for instance, that people who have what we call a more anxious attachment style. So these are people who maybe tend to seek more reassurance from others when they're in a relationship. They tended to be more impacted by the lockdowns and a lack of touch in their lives than maybe, say, someone who tends to be more independent from their partner.

So that's what that data is pointing to. But I think in that we also have to be mindful that just because we have those differences, that doesn't necessarily mean that somebody who was independent from their partner didn't mistouch or wasn't affected. It's just that, you know, those who were more anxious in their attachment were more likely to be affected. So we've briefly touched on it there and obviously touch is such an important sense. I think a misunderstood and overlooked sense, to be honest, especially after having read your book. But if it's such an important sense, then why are some people reluctant to touch others or they'll even entirely go out of the way to avoid it?

Well, I think we have to keep in mind that touch is impacted by many factors, right? So, you know, whenever we're touching something, we bring past experiences to it, present experiences, even future expectations of what might happen. And we've spoken a lot in this conversation about supportive touch, right? Those positive impacts of it. I mean, sadly, too often touch has maybe been abused over the years. That licensed touch has gone from the wrong way. And it's possible that can impact any individual. And we do have to be mindful of that darker side of touch as well. And that can carry into. interactions. But I suppose even if you haven't had those really negative experiences of touch,

there are also other factors that might influence it, right? So there are studies, for instance, showing that people who come from more conservative, I suppose, backgrounds and conservative perspectives, that can tend to pass on. Those values can pass on from one generation to another, and actually that typically appears to be less kind of affective touch exchange. So you might kind of learn that partly for an environmental factor as you grow. There can be cultural differences and by that it's kind of different bold regions that you grow up in. You might find different norms that kick in around touch. And that's a really important part of touch that even if you're a particularly tactile person, you know, you might feel really comfortable having touch in your home,

maybe, but you don't want to touch out in public because that's just not your norm. That's not you. So touch is incredibly nuanced. There's individual factors. There's contextual, like societal factors and a whole lot of history that brings into it. And we have to try and bear that in mind whenever we have our exchanges about touch. And that can be hard to navigate. Yeah. So seeing as you brought that up then, the cultural background, I think that's really interesting from personal experience. So when I was younger, I had a Dutch friend and she told me it was their tradition. I don't know. But every time she met me, she would kiss me three times. As a British person, and that made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

But I also lived in Japan for several years, and they barely even shake hands. What do we know about that? Yeah, so these are the various norms that kick in. I mean, there are differences between world regions in terms of the ways in which they touch, and you've just given a few really nice examples there. I mean, other examples might be the frequency that people touch.

There's a famous study of people in coffee shops, the 1960s, they kind of compared how often do people touch couples in the shop touch over an hour in Puerto Rico, London, in the UK, or places in the US. And what I found was that people in Puerto Rico would touch substantially. It was well over 100 times an hour, whereas in the UK in London, it was zero times an hour. I'm still surprised by those numbers. I talk about that a bit in the book, but a huge kind of difference in frequency. But behind that, I think it's also important to note that what we are also seeing is that just because some of those maybe public displays of touch might differ, that doesn't mean the affective components of touch. So things like those hugs,

those gentle strokes on the arms, etc. It doesn't mean they're not present outside of that, right? They might be present in the home. And in fact, actually, the benefits that come from some of these things may well be present across the cultures as well. So something like how what we think is appropriate and inappropriate. There's lots of consistency for that across different regions of the world. We tend to be more happy with people we have close to emotional bonds with. Something like the diversity of the different types of effective touch that we experience, that tends to not necessarily be connected to a particular country. As much as it's more connected to things like the climate, the climate of the country. So how warmer country is, how colder countries can impact

things like the diversity. So it's a much bigger grouping variable than simply where people are from that seems to drive some of the factors. And of course, mix in all of that, that you might, for instance, move one place to another, and then you might start to pick up cultural values. And I think there's a distinction there that can come in. So it's quite a complicated picture, which the science is increasingly uncovering,

I think, is probably the best way to describe it at the moment. So you touched on this thing about team sports, which I think feeds in to group behaviour as a whole. But something I found really interesting, you talk about team, like especially you say, say the Klop hug, which I think a lot of people will be aware of. How does that work? You know, this is really fascinating. The Klop hug, just in case people aren't, Yergan Klop, manager of Liverpool Football Club, incredibly well known for his hugs at the end of the game to the players. And he places

a lot of emphasis on them, I'm told, at least in his own press remarks. He says it's all about, you know, the least he can do to show them for all the effort they've put in. And there's good reasons why he's he's smart to do that. And, you know, some of those are, there is data showing that, you know, this actually goes to the NBA, so the National Basketball Association, there's the studies there that are showing that teams that engage in more positive touch more in the early seasons, things like fist bumps, high fives, etc. They tend to go on to win more games in the later season and they perform better. And part of the reason why the people think this happens has been seen in other sports is at least anecdotally and sometimes with the data,

that's come in more through, I suppose, hard numbers as well, that these team members feel a greater sense of trust and the greater sense of cooperation. So touch can be a really important part for teams to build those bonds and build that trust and connection. And of course, there's nuance to that, right? I mean, you know, I can imagine if you're if you're a Yergen Klopp, I mean, if you're your manager of Liverpool, you've got a range of players from all sorts of different backgrounds, different norms about touching that team. And maybe some won't want that hug and I'm sure he judges his hugs. So there is nuance to this that does have to play out, but on the whole, there's a lot of data showing that positive tactile communication sport can be

a really beneficial thing for team performance. Yeah, and that's kind of perhaps, if I was going to speculate, that might be why the club hugs are so effective. But I probably would say that as a Liverpool Football Club fan as well. Me too, by the way. In good company then. So another really interesting thing was the sales-in-biased. So how different types of touching by waiting staff or servers or other customers can affect how people behave. So what do we know about that? Yeah. So this stuff, this is data that goes back now from the 1970s, even up to a few years ago, studies are showing that those very subtle forms of touch.

I don't know, like when a member of waiting staff just taps you on the arm when they give you the bill can have incredibly powerful effects. So waiting staff have been shown that if they just, if a waiting staff member touches you on the arm, as opposed to just gives you the bill, as opposed to just gives you the bill, you're more likely to give them greater tips. You're going to get them more money for their service. If you go into a bar, and a lot of this is in the US again, but if the bartender touches you while you're ordering, you're more likely to order more drinks as the night goes on, if you're going, I don't know, into a bookshop. And before you go in, one of the staff just touches you before you go in. They give you a brochure and they touch you about new products in the shop. Okay, that might sound a bit dated now. It was in the 90s, but let's just imagine you're still going to get a brochure when you go into a shop these days and someone touches you. Well, you spend more time in the store. You evaluate the store more positively and then you spend more money. So there's all these subtle examples.

There's also examples, even for instance, in care homes where if you've got someone and you're trying to encourage them to eat, if you gently touch them while you do that encouragement, they're more likely to eat more food. So it's not just consumer settings, but it's these settings as well. And this just really goes back to the fact that touch exerts an incredibly powerful but often subtle effect on our behavior. We don't stop and think about these very simple things. And increasingly, as we move forward, I think we're going to maybe want to think about these things a bit more because the data is not just showing that it's touched between people to do this. There's now studies coming out showing that even if you're briefly touched by a robot,

you're more likely to comply with the request. And so this was a study that was conducted by researchers in Germany, where they basically had students and students were asked, would you like to enroll on this course? But the question came from a little robot. And either the robot touched them when the request was made or they didn't touch them. Those that were touched were more likely to enroll on the course. So again, more and more data coming in on this.

And, you know, we don't necessarily know all of the exact reasons why the brief touch makes such a difference, but it certainly does have a powerful effect. And, you know, there is something about it being brief and it being subtle and it being appropriate, you know. And who does it matters? Because I gave those examples of being in a shop and you might spend more time or more money if someone who works in the shop touches you as you're going into the store. If a customer, another customer, accidentally bumps into you in the store, touches you, you're more likely to scarper and get out of the store.

There's nuances to this, right? It's not just touching a store is great for everybody. You know, you've got to get the balance, right? It's got to be appropriate. It's got to be viewed in the right way. And then some of these benefits start to come through. So that's been really fascinating. We've covered an awful lot there.

Obviously, we've still got lots to learn. So sort of by way of summing up, what do you think the future is for research on touch? Yeah, so for me, I think the future probably is going to cut in a few levels. I think more and more we're going to get a better understanding of how we can use touch, supportive touch to improve things like health and wellbeing. I think that's really positive. But I think the future of that will maybe extend out from simply human to human touch, but to also look at how we might start to use other forms of touch technologies to bring that into

people's lives. So to give you an example, you know, we might all be familiar with wearables. We might have a wearable on our body right now. I'm wearing something on my wrist. What if you're someone who doesn't have someone around you can give you a supportive touch, but they could send you a supportive vibration through that wearable? Or what if somebody could just pre-program that wearable? So it vibrates at a frequency that nudges your heart rate into a state that's nice and relaxed. These types of wearable technologies and what we call touch tech, I think it can become more prominent. I think we'll also see interesting things like companion robots and things like this coming from. through. You know, there are now companion robots. I've actually got one on my desk, my desk in front

of me, because we're doing some research of it at the moment. But it's a fluffy companion robot that breathes and touches and has a tactile component to it, which is designed to interact with the person who has it for those people who maybe are lonely and can't have a pet in their life or don't have that partner around. And I think more and more we'll see that side of touch research moving, trying to make comparisons to say, well, is this as good as human to human touch? And even if it's not, well, is it good enough to actually help some of us? And I think that's the new frontier and touch research in my view. Thank you for listening to this episode, Vincent Genius, brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was social neuroscientist,

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