Social contact goes with better health and well-being, probably because other people help regulate how we respond to stress. That is an explanation at the level of a life. Sixteen married women went into a scanner under threat of electric shock to see it at the level of a scan.
It quiets the threat systems, and whose hand it is matters. Holding their husband’s hand produced a pervasive of activation in the neural systems supporting emotional and behavioral threat responses. Holding a hand produced a more limited attenuation, and holding no hand produced none.
Social contact promotes enhanced health and well-being, likely as a function of the social regulation of emotional responding in the face of life stressors. The question is what that regulation looks like while it is happening.
The design is three conditions under one threat. Sixteen married women were subjected to the threat of electric shock while holding their husband’s hand, the hand of an anonymous male experimenter, or no hand at all, with fMRI throughout.
Results indicated a pervasive attenuation of activation in the neural systems supporting emotional and behavioral threat responses when the women held their husband’s hand. A more limited attenuation followed from holding a stranger’s hand.
The most striking part is the gradient. Effects of spousal hand-holding varied as a function of , with higher quality predicting less threat-related activation in the right , superior frontal gyrus and hypothalamus during spousal, but not stranger, hand-holding.
wat. A husband’s hand quieted the threat response, a stranger’s hand quieted it less.
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It shows comfort acting on the machinery of threat rather than only on how people describe feeling.
How do we know?
Coan, Schaefer and Davidson scanned 16 married women with fMRI under threat of shock in three conditions: holding their husband’s hand, holding the hand of an anonymous male experimenter, or holding no hand.
What is still unknown
Sixteen married women in a scanner, which is a small and specific sample for a claim about relationships.
Learn something?
Where to next
Does a hug from your partner before a stressful moment do anything measurable?touch
Does being touched calm an animal down even when nobody is touching it?touch
How do you get a brain to adopt a rubber hand as its own?touch