Infant brain response to affective and discriminative touch: A longitudinal study using fNIRS

ABSTRACT

The affective-motivational component of touch has been shown to consistently activate the social- brain network in children, adolescents and adults, including the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS). However, very little is known about the neural mechanisms of affective touch processing during the first year of life. The objective of the present study was to analyze brain response to affective and discriminative touch in a sample of seven-month-old infants (N = 35) who were followed longitudinally at 12 months of age (N = 25). Infants were given affective and discriminative touch to the bare forearm while their brain response was recorded using functional near-spectroscopy (fNIRS). Seven-month-olds presented brain activation for affective and discriminative stimuli in channels placed over the somatosensory region, but no activation was recorded in channels placed in the temporal region for affective touch. At 12 months of age, infants presented a significant increase in hemodynamic activity in channels placed over the temporal region for affective touch, compared to seven-month-olds. Our study presents evidence of a developmental trajectory for distinct aspects of touch brain processing in the first year of life, with the recruitment of the temporal region for the affective component of touch, maturing in the second semester of life.

KEYWORDS:

• Touch processing
• infancy
• social-emotional development

Research highlights

• fNIRS captures brain activity in response to discriminative and affective touch.

• Seven-month-olds process discriminative and affective touch in a sensory discriminative region of the brain (somatosensory cortex).

• Twelve-month-old’s process affective touch in associative regions of the brain (superior temporal sulcus), similarly to children and adults.

• Affective touch seems to follow a developmental trajectory that is consistent with the emergence of other social-emotional processes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data can be accessed here

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Portuguese Science Foundation through an individual doctoral grant to Helga Miguel (SFRH/BD/86694/2012). The work was conducted at Psychology Research Center (UID/PSI/01662/2013), University of Minho, and supported by the Portuguese Science Foundation and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds (PSI/01662) and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653); Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [SFRH/BD/86694/2012].