A loving Touch

By -
Who knew that touch could have such a profound affect on human babies as well as other animals? If you don’t get enough affection as a child it could seriously affect the rest of your development.

This was studied in rats and in monkeys. With rats if they are removed from their mothers for even a short amount of time their bodies will reduce their need for food in order to stay alive. In order to do this their bodies will grow at a slower pace or stop growing all together. With monkeys if they suffered short-term deprivation they didn't have as many problems. They would become clingy with other monkeys. Monkeys that suffered long-term deprivation would become loners and would be aggressive with other monkeys.

Babies have been born deaf or blind or even both and they have been able to live almost normal lives. Children that are neglected or just not held or shown love can be drastically affected for the rest of their lives.

There was a study done mentioned in The Loving Touch is Critical for Premature Infants on Elsevier. In one group of children the mothers would hold their child every day for an hour for 14 days in a row. This children were compared to children who were just kept in standard incubator care. Over the next ten years the children were followed and the ones who had their mothers touch of the 14 days straight had developed more functioning of their autonomic nervous system and better cognitives controls.

Overall I think that touch is a sense that people take for granted. We would be no where as developed without our mother's (or other caretaker's) touch at the beginning of our lives. Imagine not being able to feel a hug or kiss from a loved one or the warm fur of your cat, or preferably dog, when cuddling with them. I don't think I could go without those things. Touch is a sense people tend to overlook and when it is one of the most necessary for our survival. 

Work Cited:

Ackerman, Diane. A Natural History of the Senses. Phoenix, 2000.

Elsevier. “The Loving Touch Is Critical for Premature Infants.” Elsevier, www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/research-and-journals/the-loving-touch-is-critical-for-premature-infants.

Comments

  1. Jonathan Brumberg-KrausFebruary 4, 2018 at 1:04 PM

    Do you think religion in general, or Christianity in particular has something important to say about this aspect of touch you discussed in your post? Like when you went on your retreat last semester, what role did touch play in people's interactions - hugging, avoidance of touching, healing/comforting touch, etc.?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The most primitive sense

By -
Image
Smell the Flowers by Kirsten Star Smell, to me, is the most primitive sense. When most mammals are born, they immediately can recognize their mother’s smell and form an attachment to that smell. Mammals like puppies are almost entirely limited to only the sense of smell until they develop more of their other senses. The sense of smell also becomes the most primitive when considering humans and the phenomenon of perfume. For years, humans hunted certain animals for the purpose of obtaining the musk produced in the anal gland. This musk in small doses can act as an aphrodisiac when put into a perfume even though it has incredibly primitive origins. Though most of Western culture has an aversion to smells considered gross or undesirable, the wealthiest of women are still willing to pay heavy prices to spray a smell once obtained from the anal glands of other animals. The sense of smell is not something that humans can control and adjust but rather it is only changed by evolution over
Read more

Cannibalism and Symbolism

By -
Symbolism plays an important role in religious ceremonies because people cannot have the divine being where they want him all the time. So they start creating ways to be in touch with God. Such as in Christianity, eating bread is symbolized to be eating God-made flesh. There are similar rituals in Judaism where they eat the food of God. A big difference between taste and the other senses is that the object that is being sensed is internalized, whereas all the other senses use an external sensation. Taste cannot extend anywhere like the other senses can. This allows the humans to have no barrier between the divine (symbolized as food) and themselves. This is the closest they can get to God, but internalizing Him.  This thought of getting the closest they can to someone by ingesting and gaining power from it led my mind to wander to the thought of serial killers that also happen to be cannibals. I know that it might be a stretch, but there are some similarities. I als
Read more

Wrap-Up Post

By -
Image
Alright, let’s tie this up in a nice little bow. I genuinely did not know what to expect coming into this class. The extent of my knowledge of the senses comes from elementary school when we had to make it a little song to get the information through our tiny heads. Beyond that, everything seemed pretty cut and dry. We have five senses. We need to use all of them to survive. It’s as simple as that. I did not know how there was enough to talk about the senses to fill an entire college course, especially one specifically regarding the relationship between the senses and religion. But the fact that we were barely able to fit all the content in before the semester ended proves just how wrong I was. Let’s talk about why that is and what some of the things I learned were. First off, even the most basic assumption about the senses, that there are five of them, was questioned immediately. The sixth sense may not have been as clearly defined as the other senses, but there was certainly a lot to
Read more