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Something SDM practitioners have understood through intuition. Now it's no longer a hippie touchy-feely thing!

 

Many individuals with autism are extremely sensitive to touch, and some of the earliest descriptions of the disorder mention that infants with autism might cry or arch their backs when held. It’s no longer one of that hippie, ‘give me a cuddle’ things. There are nerve fibers underlying this. But why? Some researchers suspect that the answer r might lurk in a system of nerves known as C-tactile afferents. While the fast, thick nerves beneath our fingertips help us tell the difference between silk and cotton, and the slower, thinner nerves nearby transmit pain, C-tactile (CT) afferents, found under hairy regions of the skin, carry information about social interactions. They respond to slow, gentle strokes — the same soft caress you’d give a baby’s cheek or a lover’s arm.

Recently, Francis McGlone, a cognitive neuroscientist, and his colleagues at Liverpool John Moore University published a commentary in the journal Neuron outlining current knowledge on CT afferents — including studies suggesting that they might play a role in autism and other developmental disorders. If so, then CT function could be assessed at birth or within days of birth to screen for these disorders, well before behavioral symptoms appear. Although earlier studies have found that gentle stroking can lower stress and blood pressure levels, the neurobiological mechanisms have remained largely a mystery, until recently. “It’s no longer one of that hippie, ‘give me a cuddle’ things,” McGlone said. “There are nerve fibers underlying this.”

 

CT afferents were first described in a cat’s leg in 1939, and then in rats and monkeys. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, Swedish scientists Ake Vallbo and Karl-Erik Hagbarth discovered that they also existed in humans after they inserted a tiny electrode into volunteers’ skin to record the electrical activity of the underlying nerves. One group of nerves — the CT afferents — fired only when the skin was gently stroked.

 

 

SOURCE: GETTY

Nerves that fire in response to pain, temperature and texture relay information about our physical environment, warning us about dangerous surfaces, for example. But why would we need a system of nerve fibers that respond selectively to gentle touch?

Could autism be the result of a touch system gone haywire? 

McGlone’s group unearthed some clues in a Nature Neuroscience study in 2009, in which a robotic brush gently stroked different parts of volunteers’ bodies at various speeds. The speeds the volunteers rated as most pleasant matched those that activate CT afferents. Three years later, McGlone scanned volunteers’ brains while the robotic brush stroked a hairy region of the forearm, innervated with CT afferents, and the hairless palm, which lacks these fibers. Stroking the palm activated the somatosensory cortex, the brain region that processes the physical sensation of touch.

 

Today, McGlone is working to identify the neurotransmitters that process the brain’s responses to gentle touch, focusing on the “feel-good” neurotransmitter serotonin, whose levels are boosted by antidepressants like Prozac.

But lightly touching the forearm activated the posterior insular cortex and mid-anterior orbitofrontal cortex, both involved in processing emotions, and the angular gyrus, responsible for maintaining our physical sense of self. (A nature study in 2002 found that stimulating the angular gyrus in epileptic patients triggered powerful out-of-body experiences.)

Earlier studies have also linked these three brain regions to autism, a complex spectrum of disorders whose features typically include impaired communication, poor social engagement and repetitive behaviors. Many of the 70 million people who fall on the autism spectrum also have trouble processing visual, tactile and other sensory information. An Autism Research study in 2012 found that brain regions responsible for sensory processing in individuals with autism had dampened responses to pleasant and neutral textures, and heightened responses to unpleasant textures.

Could autism be the result of a touch system gone haywire? 

McGlone thinks it’s possible. When gentle strokes activate CT afferents, we experience pleasant, rewarding feelings, making us more likely to seek such caresses in the future — a beneficial behavior, McGlone says, since these touches might play a crucial role in social development, especially early in life. For example, cuddling can facilitate mother-child bonding, essential for children’s well-being and survival. But gentle touch wiring, including CT afferent signaling, might go awry in autism. “It’s like building the Taj Mahal,” McGlone said. “If you don’t lay the foundation down, there will be consequences later on.”

McGlone worries about children who don’t receive enough nurturing touch, especially in the U.S., where many women receive only an eight-week-long maternity leave from work. (In the U.K., maternity leaves can extend up to a year.) “It’s an absolute abuse,” he said. But he notes that the touch system could become impaired in the womb, as well.

Scientists might be able to scan CT afferent function at birth or within days of birth, well before symptoms appear.

Research by Kevin Pelphrey, a neuroscientist at Yale University, also hints that autistic individuals have an impaired touch system. In 2012, his group scanned the brains of 19 adult volunteers while they received slow or fast brushstrokes on their forearm. Slow strokes activated brain regions involved in social behaviors — but volunteers who scored high on tests of autistic traits showed the lowest activity in these regions.

“The argument has been made that there are many autisms. I think that’s an overstatement,” Pelphrey said. Instead, he suspects that thousands of genetic causes could result in the same disruptions in the “social brain,” the network of circuits — including those activated by gentle touch — that enable us to recognize emotions, communicate, and understand others’ thoughts and wants.

 

Such a drug might even be able to treat anorexic patients, who also dislike being touched. “Anorexia is more largely present in females, and autism is more largely present in males, yet both are showing the same genesis in the [touch] system,” McGlone said.

If CT afferents play a role in autism, researchers could develop drugs that activate the receptors at the ends of these fibers. Scientists might also be able to scan CT afferent function in high-risk individuals — like those who have a sibling with autism — at birth or within days of birth, well before symptoms appear (at around 2 to 4 years of age). 

But McGlone notes that the link between autism and CT afferents still remains hypothetical and that the Neuron paper is a perspective piece, not a controlled study. “It enabled us to put together a list of ideas and hypotheses that are anchored on a very firm scientific basis showing that humans have a system of nerve fibers that respond positively to gentle touch.”

More broadly, McGlone worries about how a growing reliance on social media — and the tendency to regard touch as invasive — could affect our social development. 

“There’s hostility toward touch,” he said. “We’re demonstrating that we do have a system of nerve fibers that are maximally activated during exactly the kind of behavior between two lovers or a mother and her infant. It’s a basic biological need.”

 

 

Read more: A Gentle-Touch Hypothesis for Autism | 

 

http://www.ozy.com/a-gentle-touch-hypothesis-for-autism

What SDM practitioners have always instinctively known

It's no longer a hippie touchy-feely thing www.janfiler.com

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Well-being for Therapists and Practitioners in the Helping Professions

Spring 2020 (Date TBA)

9.30 am - 3.30 pm

at

Compton Corner Therapy Room

18 Compton Drive

Bristol, BS9 2PG

 

Self-care is often a neglected area for busy therapists and practitioners in the helping professions devoting their life to helping others. Now is the time to think about yourself and replenish your own internal emotional health and well-being. Enjoy a day of practical activities whilst being supported by a sensitive caring facilitator. These self-care methods will prove useful in your role of supporting others and can be used with clients who might also benefit from using them.

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This one-day' Well-being for Therapists' course will give you the opportunity:

 

• to understand what well-being means for you

• to relax 

• to experience a day of self-care 

• to learn and try out a range of self-care strategies and activities that can transfer to your practice with clients

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To register please fill in the form below and send it to:

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Miss K Filer

Move into Motion

Compton Corner Therapy Room

Compton Drive

Bristol

BS9 2PG

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