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Sense of Touch
Week of January 23, 2007
This week on The Infinite Mind, we examine the Sense of Touch. Guests include Dr. Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institute, University of Miami Medical School; Dr. Susan Lederman, director of the Touch Laboratory Queen's University in Ontario; Dr. Shelby Taylor, adjunct professor of psychology at the California State University, Fullerton; Ann Cunningham, a tactile artist and teacher at The Colorado Center for the Blind; Greg Wong, a student of Ann Cunningham's; and Julie Deden, director of The Colorado Center for the Blind. Also featured is a report by Devorah Klahr on an infant massage class that Stony Brook University Hospital offers free to parents of premature infants. Plus, John Hockenberry on what he's learned about sense of touch by living with a spinal cord injury that's led to the loss of sensation through much of his body.
In an introductory essay, this week's host Dr. Fred Goodwin points out that touch has traditionally been a part of the helping professions, from doctors using touch to help make a diagnosis to teachers encouraging students with a hug. It's ironic then that just as research is confirming the benefits of therapeutic touch that we're also relying less on touch. Heightened awareness of sexual abuse has led to some schools banning touch. And physicians today rely more and more on high tech tests and procedures and spend less time talking with and examining their patients. Dr. Goodwin concludes that the new research on the healing benefits of touch may help restore the sense of touch to the helping professions.
Next, Emily Fisher interviews Ann Cunningham, a tactile artist and teacher at The Colorado Center for the Blind ( CCB); Greg Wong, a student of Ann Cunningham's; and Julie Deden, director of The Colorado Center for the Blind (CCB). Ann Cunningham first became interest in making tactile art when she began to carve slate. It was such a tactile delight, she wanted to share it, she says, but when she would urge people at exhibitions of her work to touch it they were hesitant. Her interest in tactile art led her to CCB, where she now teaches students how to make tactile art of their own. Julie Deden has been blind since birth. She says Ann Cunningham's art is fun to explore and that using her fingers she can "see" a sculpture that the artist has brought to the radio studio. Greg Wong, recently blind, says he is learning to use his sense of touch and other senses in new ways. For instance, he could always distinguish raised dots on a page but now he's learning how to read Braille. The challenge is to make this tactile information personally meaningful, he says. He took Ann Cunningham's tactile art class as one way to explore his new experience of blindness and his connection with the sense of touch. He chose a piece of alabaster to carve, and following Ann Cunningham's advice, let it "speak to him," and guide his work. From the block of alabaster he ended up carving an abstract sculpture of an outstretched arm, its hand reaching out. Wong says the sculpture expresses his need to connect with the world in a new way.
To email Ann Cunningham or to learn more about her tactile art, visit ACunningham.com or you can write to her at 11697 13th Avenue, Golden, Colorado 8040-4405.
To learn more about the Colorado Center for the Blind, or to email Julie Dedan, visit the CCB web site at http://www.cocenter.org. To write to Julie Dedan or to Greg Wong write to the Colorado Center for the Blind, 2233 W Shepperd Avenue, Littleton, Colorado, 80120.
Then, Dr. Goodwin interviews cognitive psychologist Dr. Susan J. Lederman, director of the Touch Laboratory at Queen's University in Ontario. Touch receptors are located in varying densities over our body. In the hand, touch receptors are most densely located in our fingertips, which is why our fingers are more sensitive to touch than our palms. There are two pathways that touch takes to the brain. The pathways that relay information to the brain about the material qualities of an object, for instance how hard or soft it is, are more quickly traversed than the slower route taken by information as to temperature and pain. That's one reason we don't pull our hands away from a very hot surface as quickly as we might wish, suggests Dr. Goodwin. Dr. Lederman's work includes researching remote sensing devices and high tech applications for such devices. She asks Dr. Goodwin to use a long, thin object to scratch at the surface of his desk. He uses a screwdriver, reporting that he can feel the vibrations relayed through the screwdriver. That's the same principle behind the use of remote sensing devices, she tells him. Through using a stylus like mouse Internet shoppers may be able to get information about the texture of a potential purchase by running the stylus over its photograph on a monitor. A medical application that Dr. Lederman's group is developing would affect tools that surgeons use to operate in the body. These tools are typically long, thin, and very rigid, communicating little or no tactile information to the surgeon. Tactile sensors would be mounted to the end of these tools and they would trigger miniature vibrators in the handle, giving the surgeon a tactile sense of the operation.
To contact Dr. Susan J. Lederman by email or learn more about her work, visit the web site for the Touch Laboratory at Queen's University. Or you can write to her at Touch Laboratory, Room 327 Humphrey Hall, Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario Canada K7L 3N6.
Next up, Devorah Klahr reports on a class in infant massage that Stony Brook University Hospital in Long Island offers parents of premature babies. On September 30, Andrea Bogle gave birth to a baby girl, Alexandra. The birth hadn't gone as planned: baby Alexandra was born six weeks premature. Now, the baby is still in the hospital, and Andrea and her husband Chris have signed up for a free class in infant massage. Studies have shown that massage helps premature babies gain weight faster and leave the hospital earlier, and her parents are willing to try anything that will help to get her home sooner and to thrive. But Alexandra's not ready for the massage class -- she has just finished her breakfast and is now sound asleep. Instead, Patricia Cadolino, the licensed massage therapist who teaches the class, demonstrates appropriate techniques on a small doll. She tells Andrea and Chris to use unscented oil for the massages, to keep the massages to between five and ten minutes, and to make sure not to stroke too lightly, which would aggravate the baby. Before the class, Andrea spotted a penny on the floor and Chris handed it to her so that she could make a wish on it. "I wish," Andrea said, "the baby comes home today or tomorrow." The Infinite Mind is happy to report that baby Alexandra is now home with her parents.
For more information about Stony Brook University Hospital visit www.stonybrookmedicalcenter.org To reach Patricia Cadolino, call her at 631-444-4592 or send email to patricia.cadolino@stonybrook.edu
Next, Dr. Goodwin interviews psychologist Dr. Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami Medical School. Her most recent book is "Touch," published by M.I.T. Press. Dr. Field's interest in the therapeutic use of touch began when her daughter, now age 26, was a premature infant. In some of Dr. Field's early studies she found that premature babies fed intravenously gain more weight when they are sucking at a nipple and that premature babies who are massaged three times daily for ten days gain weight much faster and are able to leave the hospital an average of six days earlier. She explains that massage stimulates the babies production of human growth hormone and digestive hormones like insulin. Research in orphanages overseas has shown that babies who are deprived of touch experience severe growth delays. Massage therapy can help to stimulate the growth of such children. Dr. Field has led studies that document the benefits of massage in a number of other areas, including attention difficulties, psychiatric illness (depression and anxiety), autoimmune disorders (asthma, diabetes, and dermatitis), immune system failures (HIV and cancer), and pain (fibromyalgia, lower back pain, and carpal tunnel syndrome). In all studies, she's found that massage increases participant's levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is just what many anti-depression drugs do. Massage also decreases levels of stress hormones. Massage has also been shown to boost preschool age children's performance on intelligence tests and to boost the performance of adults in performing mathematical calculations. Research has not compared the effectiveness of different forms of massage, says Dr. Field. She points out that since light touch is aggravating to the skin, the key to an effective massage is moderate pressure.
To learn more about Dr. Tiffany Field and her research or to contact Dr. Field by email, visit the web site for the Touch Research Institutes. Or you can write to Dr. Field at TRI, University of Miami School of Medicine, P.O. Box 016820 Miami Fl, 33101.
Then Dr. Goodwin interviews Dr. Shelby Taylor, an adjunct professor in psychology at California State University, Fullerton. Dr. Taylor has designed a program called "Learn Charisma" that teaches students how to be more charismatic. Touch can be an important part of charisma. Studies have shown that waitresses who unobtrusively touch a customer as they return the customer's change get larger tips. The charismatic person is more likely to initiate touch. If you're preparing for a job interview or a big sales presentation, Dr. Taylor's advice is to come in, look the person you're meeting in the eye, and stick out your hand for a handshake. "And if you're wondering how many shakes is appropriate," she says, "Research shows two and a half shakes is about right."
Dr. Shelby Taylor can be contacted at the Department of Psychology; California State University, Fullerton P.O. Box 6846 Fullerton, CA 92834-6846.
Concluding the show, commentator John Hockenberry says he's learned about touch through losing his sense of touch. A spinal cord injury has left much of his body without sensation. We're used to using touch as our way of orienting ourselves, demarcating what we can feel as "us," and what's beyond sensation as "other." Losing sense of touch changed all that. His legs are still very much his legs, even if they are numb to touch, as he quickly realized at the movies with a date, soon after the spinal cord injury. Caressing his date's knee, he wondered at her lack of responsiveness, then looked down. He was fondling his own knee, just one example of how the barrier that sensation had posed between him and the rest of the world had fallen.
