How touch and emotion combine to shape our memories and relationships

A parent's gentle touch stays with us and shapes our future development and wellbeing

Why does a comforting touch stay with us for years, while other sensations quickly fade from our minds? A new paper offers a novel answer, proposing the first comprehensive neurobiological model of affective tactile memory: the way emotionally meaningful touch is encoded, stored, and recalled.

The article, by Dr Laura Crucianelli, Lecturer in Psychology at Queen Mary University of London, Dr Federica Meconi, Assistant Professor in Neuroscience at the University of Trento, Italy, and Henrik Bischoff, researcher from the Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria, reviews decades of research in neuroscience, psychology and clinical science and puts forward a new concept of affective tactile memory, arguing that emotionally meaningful touch is stored in the brain in powerful and lasting ways.

Dr Crucianelli says: “A comforting touch doesn’t just fade; it may become part of us.

Through an interplay between sensory signals and emotional brain networks, touch experiences can be remembered both consciously and unconsciously, shaping how safe we feel, how we bond with others, and how we navigate relationships across the lifespan.”

The research opens a new window into how early and everyday tactile experiences quietly influence our emotional lives.

Memories of affective touch are emotional as well as tactile

While touch has long been studied as a basic sensory system, this paper shifts the focus to its emotional and memory-related functions. The authors bring together evidence from neuroscience, psychology, and physiology to show that touch is not just perceived in the moment, but it is deeply intertwined with memory systems that shape future behaviour and social interaction.

Crucially, the paper distinguishes affective touch - such as a gentle caress - from purely discriminative touch and argues that these experiences engage specialised neural pathways linked to emotion, reward, and bodily regulation.

“Affective touch has been largely overlooked in memory research. We show that it deserves a central place in how we understand the emotional brain.” says Dr Crucianelli, “It may be that when we remember a meaningful touch, the brain reactivates traces of how that experience felt in the body.”

Memories of touch may be held in the body

One of the most striking ideas is that memories of touch may be fundamentally embodied, relying not only on brain-based representations but also on the reactivation of bodily and emotional states. This suggests that recalling a touch is not like replaying a neutral image; it may partially recreate how that touch felt in the body.

A mother’s touch could shape lifelong wellbeing

By proposing a unified model of how affective touch is remembered, the paper fills a major gap in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. It connects sensory processing, emotion, and memory into a single framework, offering new ways to understand how early tactile experiences, especially in caregiving contexts such as the gentle touch a baby receives from their parents, shape development and wellbeing.

“Even the most subtle forms of touch can leave lasting imprints on how we think, feel, and relate to others” the Authors add, “This work highlights how deeply our relationships are rooted in physical, embodied experience.”

The findings have important implications for mental health, particularly in conditions where touch processing or emotional memory is altered. They also shed light on the role of touch in social bonding, attachment, and resilience, highlighting how deeply human connection is rooted in physical experience.

In a world where digital interaction is increasingly dominant, this research is a timely reminder: skin to skin touch leaves a lasting imprint on the brain and on who we become.