bioRxiv Science⌕ Search
Home/Archive/bioRxiv

bioRxiv · 10.1101/2024.01.30.577948

Characteristics of vicarious touch reports in a general population

Smit, S.·Zopf, R.·Rich, A.
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Vicarious touch broadly refers to sensory, neural, or affective responses to observing touch on another person. In this study, we focus on the conscious experience of these sensations. We collected vicarious touch reports from 422 undergraduate students who viewed videos from the Validated Touch-Video Database (VTD), a stimulus set systematically rated for hedonic qualities, arousal, and perceived threat levels. A surprisingly large majority (84%) of participants reported vicarious sensations such as touch, tingling, pressure, and pain, predominantly matching the location of touch on the hands observed in the videos. Contrary to previous studies, we found that vicarious touch was more prevalent in women than men. Additionally, while earlier research suggested a correlation between vicarious sensations and emotional reactivity, our data did not support this relationship. The nature and intensity of reported sensations varied strongly with the emotional content of the videos: pleasant touches often evoked ticklish or warm sensations, while unpleasant touches often resulted in pain or pressure. Participants regularly described their sensations as either pleasant or unpleasant, indicating that the affective qualities of observed touch were mirrored in their experiences. Subjective arousal and threat ratings taken from the VTD for each video strongly correlated with the prevalence and intensity of vicarious touch measured here, with painful, highly arousing touches eliciting the strongest responses. Even observing touch on a non-human object occasionally triggered similar vicarious sensations. Using a new clustering approach, we identified three distinct profiles of vicarious touch, each characterised by unique sensory experiences, variations in the localisation and intensity of sensations, and differences in responses to observing touch on another person versus an object. Overall, our results challenge the traditional view that conscious vicarious touch experiences are a rare phenomenon and underscore the diversity of vicarious sensory perception.

Source connections

Explore related subjects

neurosciencePreprint

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Smit, S., Zopf, R., Rich, A.. 2024-02-01. Characteristics of vicarious touch reports in a general population. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.01.30.577948

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related preprints

bioRxiv2026

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Cell Types in Describing Neuronal Physiological Features

Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) captures detailed gene expression profiles at scale, while patch-clamp recordings measure intrinsic neuronal electrophysiological properties. Modeling the relations between these two modalities remains a challenge. Here, we compare how well electrophysiological features can be predicted by traditional transcriptomic cell type classification, representations derived from a foundational model (scGPT) pretrained on large-scale scRNA-seq datasets, ion channel-coding genes, and highly variable genes. Using paired transcriptomic and electrophysiological patch-sequencing data from 495 human neurons from neurosurgical tissue, we find that cluster-level cell type representations consistently outperform highly variable gene selection, ion channel gene selection, and context-enriched scGPT embeddings. Notably, performance varies across model architectures and initializations, and the best results are obtained by combining the outputs of separate cell type and scGPT-based models. Together, these findings suggest that traditional discrete cellular classification is highly effective in predicting physiological features. For maximum performance it can be complemented by pretrained transformer models.

neuroscience↗
bioRxiv2026

A nonlinear inhibition pathway underlying cortical responses to tuned holographic optogenetic perturbations

Optogenetics enables causal manipulation of cortical activity. Perturbation responses can be counterintuitive due to network interactions, making theory essential for predicting them. Existing approaches often rely on linear approximations, which fail for many biologically relevant perturbations. Here we develop a nonlinear theory of responses to holographic perturbations in cell-type-specific recurrent networks with structured connectivity. We fit a nonlinear model to mouse V1 data, which shows cotuned-ensemble suppression: perturbing spatially clustered neurons with similar preferred orientations yields markedly stronger short-range suppression than perturbing untuned ensembles. We show that cotuned-ensemble suppression arises from a feature-tuned, nonlinear inhibition pathway implicating somatostatin-positive (SST) interneurons. The theory predicts that cotuned ensembles suppress parvalbumin-positive (PV) neurons but facilitate SST neurons, and links the degree of cotuned-ensemble suppression or facilitation to the variance of the SST response. This framework identifies mechanisms by which nonlinear inhibition sculpts cortical dynamics and establishes a predictive basis for targeted optogenetic interventions.

neuroscience↗
bioRxiv2026

Proteomic signatures of APOE ε4 across human tissues and cell types in Alzheimers disease

The apolipoprotein E {varepsilon}4 (APOE {varepsilon}4) allele is the strongest genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimers disease (AD). However, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain unclear. This study included 1691 participants from the Religious Orders Study and Rush Memory and Aging Project (ROSMAP), 1226 participants from the Accelerating Medicines Partnership - Alzheimers Disease (AMP-AD) Diverse Cohorts Study, and 735 participants from the Alzheimers Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). To characterise APOE {varepsilon}4 molecular effects, we analysed proteomic data from plasma, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived astrocytes and neurons, as well as transcriptomic and proteomic data from multiple brain regions. The association of APOE {varepsilon}4 with AD neuropathology was also examined. APOE {varepsilon}4 carriers shared a plasma proteomic signature enriched for immune processes, irrespective of AD diagnosis. A machine learning classifier trained on this signature discriminated APOE {varepsilon}4 carriers from non-carriers in an independent cohort using CSF proteomics. APOE {varepsilon}4 carriage was associated with higher Braak stages and Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimers Disease (CERAD) score. However, only limited APOE {varepsilon}4-associated transcriptomic and proteomic changes were observed in bulk brain tissue, with poor cross-layer concordance. Proteomic analyses of iPSC-derived astrocytes and neurons further revealed cell-type-specific APOE {varepsilon}4-associated changes. APOE {varepsilon}4 is associated with a consistent proteomic signature across plasma and CSF. Its molecular effects in the brain differ across cell types, brain regions and molecular layers. These findings support the need for cell-type-resolved multi-omic studies to elucidate how APOE {varepsilon}4 confers AD risk.

neuroscience↗