Development of Partner Touch Task: An In-scanner Assessment of Human-human Touch Mechanism with Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Open Access

Abstract

Touch interactions are strongly connected to an individual’s perception of emotions, movements, and social interactions which are processed through the somatosensory, motor, and visual cortex regions of the brain. Emotions affect our mental health: they influence our perception, alter our physical strength and interfere with our reason. Differences in levels of expression/activation in the somatosensory cortex are connected to the differences in an individual’s ability to perceive touch. Moreover, differences in social cognition, and neural pathway mechanisms of perceiving touch, movement, and behavior can also directly affect an individual’s social touch perception.

            Touch interactions have also been shown to play an important role in partnered social dance as it allows them to perceive one another’s movements and pressure cues. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the development of a functional task (the Touch task) to be performed in a baseline magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan to assess neural areas that correspond to touch while a patient with mild cognitive impairments is thinking of completing a motor goal such as partnered dance. We will conduct fMRI assessments to collect Neural activation information analyzed between completing tasks that include “notice the touch,” (T) where a member of the lab will touch the patient’s arm down to their hand in a rhythmic pattern, “notice the touch, listen, and watch,” (TLW) where participants experience the touch of the lab member along with listening to a 15-second clip of tango music while tapping when they hear the music and watching a screen of a man and women tango dancing. The last condition is “listen and watch,” (LW) where participants will listen to tango music and watch the couple dance without touch. Each of the conditions last for 15 seconds and is interspersed with 15-second periods of rest. 

Results from a group fMRI contrast showed that the TLW condition successfully helped participants think of completing a motor goal and use mental imagery to imagine themselves dancing. Looking at human-human touch interactions in the context of partnered dance helps us understand the neural mechanisms behind touch interactions involving music and visual stimuli for people with MCI. We hope to use the data collected from the baseline fMRI scan and compare it to future fMRI results after participants undergo tango intervention classes to see improvements in motor-cognitive functioning. 

Table of Contents

1. Introduction           1

1.1. Touch interactions 1

1.2. Theories about processing emotional body language 2

1.3. Types of human touch 2

1.3.1. Importance of touch for psychosocial development 3

1.3.2. Discriminative and affective touch 3

1.3.3. Rhythmic touch 5

1.3.4. Self-touch 5

1.3.5. Pain 7

1.4. Basic neural mechanisms of touch 7

1.4.1. Somatosensory Cortex 8

1.4.2. Neural Mechanisms of observing human-human touch interactions 10

1.4.3. Neural mechanisms of human-human touch interactions in individuals with disabilities  11

1.4.4. Neural Mechanisms of motor imagery tasks 12

1.5. Partnered dance study 15

1.6. Basic neural mechanisms of partnered tango dance 16

1.7. Basic neural mechanisms of partnered tango dance in older adults with cognitive impairments  18

2. Methods 20

2.1. Participants 20

2.2. Screening Related Measurements 21

2.3. Administered fMRI assessment 24

2.3.1. Touch task protocol conditions 25

2.4. Anatomical data processing 27

2.5. Task fMRI preprocessing 28

2.6. Task fMRI GLM 30

2.7. fMRI Task Performance Exit Survey 31

3. Results 34

3.1. Participant Cognitive Assessments 34

3.2. BOLD differences between T, LW, and TLW conditions from PRR001, an Exemplary Participant 35

3.3. BOLD Contrasts between T, LW, and TLW conditions in Group 38

4. Discussion 42

4.1. TLW vs LW group contrast comparison 42

4.2. TLW vs T group contrast comparison 42

4.3. TLW vs (T+LW)/2 group contrast comparison 43

4.5. (T+LW)/2 vs TLW comparison in PRR001 44

4.6. TLW vs (T+LW)/2 comparison in PRR001 44

4.7. TLW vs T comparison in PRR001 45

4.8. Similarities between exemplary participant PRR001 and group contrast results 45

4.9. Conclusions 46

4.10. Limitations 47

4.10.1. Study Sample 47

4.11. Future Directions 48

5. Tables and Figures 

Table 1 22

Table 2 32

Table 3 34

Table 4 41

Figure 1 25

Figure 2 27

Figure 3 31

Figure 4 37

Figure 5 38

Figure 6 39

Figure 7 40

6. References 49

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Biology
Degree	B.S.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Biology, General
Keyword	biology
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Madeline Hackney , Emory University
Committee Members	Jennifer Stevens , Emory University Susan Riner , Emory University Alexander Escobar , Emory University

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