Influence of odors on pleasant touch perception

气味对愉快触觉的影响

• 批准号: 244747802
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Ilona Croy
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Fellowships
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2012-12-31 至 2013-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/244747802?language=en
• 关键词: Influence; odors; pleasant; touch; perception

The project aims to study the influence of odors on pleasant touch perception. Pleasant touch is a very basic sensation with implications for all kind of social relationships, especially to intimate partners and to children. The sensory neurons that code pleasant touch perception are called C-tactile afferents. Those neurons are located in human hairy skin and respond to innocuous, mechanical stimuli and are most vigorously activated by pleasant touch, as microneurography studies could show. C-tactile coded touch perception is very robust even for long times of stimulation. I want to determine how the perception of touch as being pleasant can be modulated by odors. It is known that odors are powerful emotion elicitors. They are easily able to influence mood, can carry information about the emotional state of others and play an important role in mate choice. Therefore, I hypothesize that odors influence the perception of pleasant touch.Two studies are carried out to examine this: a psychophysical experiment and an fMRI Study. In both studies the participants are stimulated by a robot with C-tactile relevant touch, which is preceded by three different kinds of odors: a disgusting one; a pleasant one and a neutral one for control purpose. For the psychophysical experiment the participants are asked to rate the perceived pleasantness of the touch, for the fMRI study the activation of brain areas coding the interaction of odor and touch is analyzed. In result, the project will lead to an understanding of sensory integration of pleasant touch and olfaction. Furthermore, I hope it opens the door to a better understanding of psychosomatic diseases that go along with disturbance in pleasant touch perception, like obsessive compulsive disorder, eating disorder or autism.

该项目旨在研究气味对愉快触觉的影响。愉快的触摸是一种非常基本的感觉，对所有类型的社会关系都有影响，尤其是对亲密伴侣和儿童。编码愉快触觉的感觉神经元称为 C 触觉传入神经元。这些神经元位于人类多毛的皮肤中，对无害的机械刺激做出反应，并且如显微神经描记术研究所示，愉快的触摸会最强烈地激活这些神经元。即使长时间的刺激，C-触觉编码的触觉感知也非常稳健。我想确定气味如何调节令人愉悦的触觉感知。众所周知，气味是强大的情绪诱发剂。它们很容易影响情绪，可以携带有关他人情绪状态的信息，并在择偶中发挥重要作用。因此，我假设气味会影响对愉快触摸的感知。进行了两项研究来检验这一点：心理物理学实验和功能磁共振成像研究。在这两项研究中，参与者都受到具有 C 触觉相关触摸的机器人的刺激，在此之前会出现三种不同的气味：令人厌恶的气味；令人厌恶的气味；令人厌恶的气味；令人厌恶的气味。一种是令人愉快的，一种是中性的，用于控制目的。在心理物理学实验中，参与者被要求对触摸的感知愉悦程度进行评分，在功能磁共振成像研究中，分析了编码气味和触摸相互作用的大脑区域的激活。结果，该项目将导致人们对愉快的触觉和嗅觉的感官整合的理解。此外，我希望它为更好地理解与愉快触觉障碍相关的心身疾病打开了大门，例如强迫症、饮食失调或自闭症。