Objective
As the digital nature of society increases, the frequency of human contact decreases. This seemingly inevitable relationship has potentially devastating consequences for the mental and emotional health of billions of people. Clear understanding and appropriate action are the only path to mitigating this looming crisis.
Currently, the field of interpersonal touch research is a patchwork of theoretical frameworks and, worse still, lacks robust, ecologically valid experimental data. Objective One of TOUCHNET is to build a large database centered around interpersonal touch behavior: its frequency, triggers, and effects. A multi-center, ecological momentary assessment approach, will provide over 100000 individual touch events, connected to, in sub-sets, autonomous nervous system activity, questionnaires, social factors, and health (i.e. stress reduction). The TOUCHNET database itself will be a significant contribution to the field.
Objective Two will leverage this database to probe the mechanisms by which touch has its effects. Merging concepts and assumptions across affective touch and social brain theories, I will examine touch-generated networks (neural signatures) associated with social processing and stress reduction. Ultra-high field, touch-no-touch, imaging experiments will compare connectivity and the functional input-output relation within social and allostatic-interoceptive brain networks. Further the direct effect of touch on communication, namely synchronicity, will be examined through fNIRS hyper-scanning.
TOUCHNET will help clarify the role touch plays in society. A much-needed database of touch events will allow ecologically valid assessment across the field while detailed lab-based studies will advance our understanding of the interaction between touch, sociality, and stress. Finally, in an increasingly digital world, where touch substitutes may unfortunately be necessary, this work will take initial steps toward positive distance communication.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
07743 JENA
Germany