PROGRAMME

  • Monday 9 Jun 2025
  • Tuesday 10 Jun 2025
  • Wednesday 11 Jun 2025

Monday 9 Jun 2025

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM | Welcome

Welcome note

11:00 AM - 1:00 PM | Talk Session 1

• Slav Bagriantsev: "A new model for touch detection in the Pacinian corpuscle"
• Reinoud Kaldewaij: "The Self Beyond the Brain: Self-Other Distinction of Touch in the Spinal Cord"
• Michaela Arnold: "Touch Medicine: Innovative Approaches and Clinical Applications"
• Claire Wardak: "Somatosensory Event-Related Potentials: from Simple to Complex and Social Tactile Stimulations"
• Melina-Elena Moutsia: "The Language of Touch: Refining Linguistic Descriptors of Social Touch"
• Rochelle Ackerley: "Exploring the interplay between texture and touch velocity on tactile pleasantness"

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM | Lunch 1

Catering

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM | Keynote 1

Patrick Haggard:
"The multiple aspects of self-touch"

Our own body is the first object that we know, and we know it through a process of self-touch that begins long before birth. One body part touches another almost constantly. Sometimes, such self-touch is incidental (sitting with legs crossed), sometimes it is habitual or compulsive (face-touching, hair-pulling), sometimes it is clearly goal-directed and voluntary. Self-touch allows us to discover ourselves as an active subject, but also as a physical, space-occupying object like other objects. By active control of movement, one can explore and regulate one’s tactile sensations. The resulting integration of movement and tactile signals is thought to be an important enabler of a coherent self-consciousness. Despite these central roles of self-touch, experimental studies are rare – perhaps because it is difficult to intervene in the direct relation between movement and touch. We have developed a novel way of studying a laboratory analogue of self-touch by placing two haptic robots in a leader:follower configuration. The participant moves one robot with the right hand to synchronously stroke their left forearm with the other robot. By varying the gain of the spatial coupling between the robots, we have quantified the contributions of motor and tactile signals to spatial awareness of one’s own body. We have further shown that the act of stroking self-touch reaffirms and re-establishes a level of bodily self-awareness that can counteract disturbances of bodily awareness, such as those caused by altered visual input. Self-touch thus appears to be a key enabler of self-representation and self-awareness. These sensorimotor perspectives have important impacts for psychological functioning generally, and perhaps for mental health.

3:00 PM - 5:00 PM | Symposium 1

Affective touch and sensorimotor processing

• Birgit Hasenack: "Modulation of the post-auricular reflex in response to social and CT-optimal touch"
• Anne Hoffmann: "Sensory attenuation of self-touch and -tickle: Evidence from psychophysics and neuroimaging"
• Valentina Cazzato: "Corticospinal Excitability Reflects Motor Contributions to Vicarious Affective Touch"
• India Morrison: "Do sensorimotor brain responses play a role in affective touch?"

5:00 PM - 7:00 PM | Poster session 1

• Sabine Baeyens: "Touch in Action - Qigong Sensory Treatment: Evidence and future directions for affective touch in autism"
• Lucas Bohlen: "Effect of osteopathic manipulative treatment on interoceptive accuracy and sensibility in healthy subjects and patients with chronic low back pain: A randomised controlled trial"
• Madeleine Bregulla: "Affective touch and face recognition: effects on memory and meta-cognitive performance"
• Franziska Buchmann: "Affective Empathy and CT-touch (AffECT): Does C-fiber activity modulate pain empathy? - A pilot study"
• Rosa Bufo: "Predictive insights through statistical and machine learning approaches to explore higher-level perceptions in touch"
• Elaine Burini: "Clinical Project of Psychophysical Integration SUBTLE TOUCH METHOD COMPLEMENTARY TO CALATONIA BURINI"
• Marella Campagna: "Visuo-tactile aesthetic perception: A quantitative-qualitative study on material textures"
• Artur Carreira: "Unraveling the Multilevel Modulation of C-Tactile Fibers on Somatosensory Input: A Study of Spinal Neural Activity"
• Laura Case: "Effects of trauma on affective touch perception and its modulation of pain"
• Müge Cavdan: "Exploring the unpleasantness and threat of spiky surfaces across sensory modalities"
• Valentina Cazzato: "Exploring the Role of Self-Applied Touch in Dance Movement Therapy: Insights from Motion Capture and Subjective Experiences"
• Shaunna Devine: "The Legacy of Children"s Social Care: Exploring Variability in Touch Experiences and Attitudes."
• Karl Devreese: "Touch in Action - Dynamic Hapto-Relaxation; an affective-touch-based application as a tactile relaxation therapeutic method"
• Jorge Esteves: "Active inference and touch-based therapeutic modalities: A Free Energy approach to trauma and persistent physical symptoms"
• Merle Fairhurst: "Touch in and as medicine"
• Sophia Faresse: "A psychophysical investigation of touch perception on the torso"
• Yvonne Friedrich: "Measuring differences in social touch: Development and validation of the short Touch Experiences and Attitudes Questionnaire (TEAQ-s)"
• Michael Gerlach: "Don"t forget the Hug: Physicality and Reational Bridges in an Inpatient Treatment of a Psychosomatic Clinic."
• Rita Griesche: "#6 Touch in Action: RECLAIMING TOUCH:  A Mindful Education Approach to Social-Emotional Growth "
• Joerg Henkel: "The main factors influencing the effect of mindfulness-based massages on the well-being of seniors"
• Lorraine Horton: "Part of Touch in Action.  Touch dialogue with learning-disabled adults who are non-verbal"
• Vanessa Kaufmann: "Feeling connected: Both dog touch and gaze boost owner positive affect"
• Charlotte Krahé: "Relational context and individual differences influence the perception and effects of affective touch"
• Leslee Lazar: "Enhanced Tactile Perception and Emotional Well-Being Through Mindful Charkha Spinning: A pilot Study"
• Patrick Lemli: "Effects of Psychoactive Hand Massage on Geriatric Patients in a Psychiatric Day-Care Hospital"
• Jingjun Liu: "The Soft Palm Robot – A Novel Approach to Deliver Gentle Stroking Touch"
• India Morrison: "How social and emotional experience shapes touch processing in the brain: insights from brain-hormone co-modulation"
• Mark Paterson: "From Foerster and Zotterman to the question of the "social": Revisiting histories of the neurobiology of affective touch"
• Helen Powell: "Decoding social touch: a multi-modal exploration of tactile perception, gender and culture"
• Anita Ribeiro: "“Is Angelina Jolie a ‘warm’ or a ‘hot’ girl? Your thoughts and feelings about it.” A developmental perspective on slow and fast conducting nerve fibers as an integrated system"
• Saito Sakaguchi: "Communication through social touch in Autsim Spectrum Condition"
• Daniela Seyringer: "Keep it calm: Self-touch dampens arousal-related responses"
• Wenhan Swen: "How to Analyse Physiological Data for Affective Touch"
• Sofia Tagini : "Affective Touch in Obesity: Does Who Touches You Matter?"
• Eleonore ten Thij: "Affective touch in Haptotherapy. (Part of Life Poster Project Touch in Action)"
• Agnes van Swaay: "Touch in Action - Haptotherapy for people with cancer: Qualitative research outcomes"
• Anita Ribeiro: "Touch in Action - Calatonia® gentle touch modality in psychotherapy: The complexity of therapeutic touch"

7:00 PM - 8:30 PM | Dinner 1

Catering

Tuesday 10 Jun 2025

9:00 AM - 10:00 AM | Keynote 2

Zhou-Feng Chen

"How do you feel: molecular and neural mechanisms of pleasant touch sensation"
Pleasant touch, manifesting in actions like hugging, embracing, and grooming, is fundamental to the well-being of social animals. However, it remains one of the least understood of somatosensory modalities. In this talk, I will explain the organizing principle by which pleasant touch sensation is encoded and distinguished from sensations with negative valence such as itch and pain. Our study indicates that the neuropeptide prokineticin (PROK2) in sensory neurons and a subset of the spinal interneurons defined by PROK2 receptor expression constitute a labeled line that encodes and conveys pleasant touch information. PROK2 mutant mice fail to engage in social grooming/licking, a primary form of affective social touch in rodents, resulting in anxiety and depressive-like behaviors. These mutant mice provide a unique animal model for exploring the mechanisms underlying the development of depressive-like behavior. I will further discuss how pain may paradoxically evoke pleasant sensations. Such crosstalk between sensory modalities significantly enhances our sensory, emotional, perceptual, and behavioral capabilities, which could be leveraged therapeutically to improve human health and well-being.

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM | Talk session 2

• Laura Case: "Mechanisms and Effects of Pain Modulation by Touch, and Differences in Chronic Pain"
• Yvonne Friedrich: "From Hugs to Happiness: Associations of Partner Touch in a Large-Scale Representative Survey"
• Francis McGlone: "Effect of C-LTMR Targeted Touch on Stress and Gut Microbiome Diversity"

11:00 AM - 1:00 PM | Symposium 2

Social touch and mental health: stress-buffering effects and neurocognitive mechanisms

• Sebastian Ocklenburg: "Hugging it out: Complex social touch and how it affects stress and wellbeing"
• Jakub Kraus: "Processing of social touch in humans: a clinical and neuropharmacological account"
• Paula Salamone: "Schizophrenia’s altered sense of self: studying multimethod self or social touch differences and interoception in patients and controls"
• Danilo Postin: "Neural and Behavioral Patterns of Social Touch and the Association with Social Deficits?"

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM | Lunch 2

Catering

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM | Keynote 3

Uta Sailer:
"The Purpose and Efficacy of Touch: Exploring Goals and Determinants in Human Interaction"

Touch plays a fundamental role in human interaction, functioning as a sophisticated signaling system that shapes both immediate responses and long-term relationships. This talk examines touch through the lens of goal direction – the conscious and unconscious objectives we aim to achieve through tactile interaction.
The presentation analyses some primary domains of touch effects: emotional state modulation, behavioral adaptation, and social bond formation. I examine how touch influences pleasantness and positive affect, with particular attention to mediating variables, e.g. variety. The impact of touch, for example regarding stress reduction, is discussed within the framework of ecological validity and partner dynamics. Throughout the talk I draw on concepts from different fields such as psychology, sociology and biology. This integrated approach provides insights into how touch achieves its varied purposes in human interaction.

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM | Talk session 3

• Martina Giancane: "When Humans Touch Robots: Decoding Emotional Tactile Communication in Human-Robot Interaction"
• Xiaoqin Cheng: "A Pleasure that Lasts: EEG Insights into the Habituation to Prolonged Gentle Touch"
• Ilona Croy: "EMA touch study"

4:00 PM - 5:00 PM | Meet the editor

Samantha Antusch
Publishing in Nature Human Behaviour and the Nature Portfolio

5:00 PM - 7:00 PM | Poster session 2

• Rochelle Ackerley: "Differences in discriminative and affective touch perception between self- and other-touch and in modifying the skin"
• Sabine Baeyens: "LIVE-POSTER project - Touch in Action - Healing tactile sensitivities: Qigong Sensory Treatment and integration in autism"
• Alexis Block: "What makes the un-huggable huggable?"
• Olga Dal Monte: "The physiological correlates of the social softness illusion"
• Márcia da-Silva: "The Role of Affective Touch in Modulating Attention and Perceived Pleasantness During Temporal Summation of Second Pain"
• Karl Devreese: "Part of the LIVE-POSTER project - Touch in Action: Dynamic Hapto-Relaxation: an affective-touch-based application as a tactile relaxation therapeutic method"
• Antonia Düfeld: "The Impact of Affective and Non-Affective Touch on Face Processing in 7-month-old Infants"
• Anne Felsenheimer: "Does self-touch change how we perceive emotions?"
• Susan Frazer: "Touch in Action Symposium - The Application of Affective Touch in Body Psychotherapy"
• Yvonne Friedrich: "Tracking touch with ecological momentary assessment: Age-related variations in partner touch frequency"
• Gregory Gerling: "Quantitative evaluation of human brushing physics in affective touch"
• Maria Irene Gonçalves: "Part of the LIVE-POSTER project - Touch in Action: Subtle Touch developmental play for preschool children"
• Rita Griesche: "Part of the LIVE-POSTER project - TOUCH in ACTION  Reclaiming Touch:  Bridging Emotional and Social Gaps in Schools.  Mindful-Touch Education ©"
• Lorraine Horton: "Part of the Live Poster Project: TOUCH IN ACTION: Touch dialogue with learning-disabled adults who are non-verbal"
• Zhong Jian Chee: "Scratchy, sticky, and universally icky? Tactile unpleasantness judgements are similar across four countries"
• Denys Kovalenko: "C-afferent density and perception of affective touch: a corneal confocal microscopy (CCM) study"
• Anna Maria : "Trauma and Affective Touch: Clinical Insights from Massage Therapy Practice"
• India Morrison: "Fast and glabrous: fast palm stroking trumps cortical selectivity for velocity and hairy-skin stimulation during pleasant touch"
• Rita Pereira: "Modulation of Spinal Nociceptive Processing by C-Tactile Afferents: Evidence from the Nociceptive Flexion Reflex"
• Anita Ribeiro: "Part of the LIVE-POSTER project by Touch in Action - Subtle Touch modality Fractional Decompression Touch technique: Lifting the heaviness to find the lightness of being"
• Benjamin Rieger: "Bidirectional Temporal Coupling Between Affective Touch and Lullaby Singing in Caregiving Behaviors"
• Christian Schranz: "Do touch giving and receiving feel differently?"
• Agnieszka Sorokowska: "Refining the Categorization of Interpersonal Touch Behaviors: Insights from a Cross-Cultural Qualitative Study"
• Louise Staring: "The Sensitouch Study: A Prospective Exploration of the Development of Affective Touch Sensitivity in Early Life"
• Laura Stevens: "Anxiolytic Effects of Social Touch: Moderating Influences of Trauma and Social Interaction Experiences"
• Sofia Tagini : "Affective Touch in Anorexia Nervosa: The Importance of Who is Touching You and the Role of Attachment Dimensions."
• Caroline Thomas: "Infant Massage as a Therapeutic Intervention for Perinatal Mental Health Difficulties"
• Irene Valori: "Bridging the Distance: Exploring the Neurophysiological and Behavioural Markers of Social Connection in Pseudo-haptic VR"
• Agnes van Swaay: "Part of the LIVE-POSTER Project: Experiencing being touched as a body-object or body-subject as applied in haptotherapy for people with cancer"
• Judith Weda: "Perception threshold of younger and older adults of squeezing pressure by a soft actuator on the arm"
• Ziliang Xiong: "Characterization of human tickling behavior and associated bodily maps of ticklishness"
• Ludovica Zanini: "Sensitivity and vagal reactivity to CT-mediated Affective Touch in Mild Cognitive Impairment due to Alzheimer’s Disease"
• Verena Zierer: "Vicarious Affective Touch: Understanding Contextual and Gender Influences"

7:00 PM - 8:30 PM | Dinner 2

Catering

Wednesday 11 Jun 2025

9:00 AM - 10:00 AM | Keynote 4

Yoel Fink:
"How sophisticated could a fiber be?"
Fabrics cover a truly valuable tract of real estate – the surface of our bodies. Exposed to troves of data, important insights would be revealed if only fabrics could compute: sense, store, analyze, infer, alert, and act while retaining their aesthetics, comfort and resilience. My talk will focus on the development of a new class of computers, fiber-computers and discuss prospects for the transformation of fabrics into sophisticated computing and networked environments to deliver new insights and provide added value to humans.

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM | Talk session 4

• Leehe Peled-Avron: "The Impact of Sexual Trauma on Social Touch in Daily Life: Insights from Ecological Momentary Assessment"
• Louise Kirsch: "The ontogenesis of socio-affective touch perception: Assessing valence and inferring relationships from observed tactile interactions"
• Gregory Gerling: "Mother-Infant Touch: Contact upon first touch is optimal for eliciting responses from C-tactile mechanosensitive afferents"

11:00 AM - 1:00 PM | Symposium 3

New frontiers and future considerations for digital social touch

• Jan van Erp: "Avatar mediated social touch"
• Irene Valori : "Bridging the Distance: Exploring the Neurophysiological and Behavioural Markers of Social Connection in Pseudo-haptic VR"
• Mark Paterson: "The place of the ‘social’ in ‘mediated social touch’: devices and robots that touch back"
• Gijs Huisman: "Digital social touch technology as fundamentally interactive"
• Rachael Burns: "Creating Dynamic Social Robots that Feel Both Touch and Emotion"

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM | Lunch 3

Catering

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM | Data blitz session

• Sairam Saikumar: "The Role of Tactile Friction and Surface Roughness in Perceived Pleasantness"
• Alessandra Piatti: "Interpersonal neural synchrony and emotional attunement during affective touch"
• Gregory Gerling: "Identifying the impact of subtle contact changes on recognition accuracy and emotional perception in human-to-human social touch"
• Ingrid Boedker: "Sleeping arrangements and maternal-infant night-time touch"
• Paula Trotter: "Social touch within romantic relationships is uniquely protective against depression: evidence from the Touch Experiences and Attitudes Questionnaire (TEAQ)"
• Hanan Ez-zahraoui: "Somatosensory activity during the perception of vicarious social touch: an EEG-ERP study"
• Eva Dydenkova: "The Impact of Early Life Adversity on the Developing Social Brain: An EEG Study"
• Thanh-Ioan Le: "Pleasant touch mediated by Aβ-afferents: a comparative study between brush strokes and vibrotactile apparent motions"

3:00 PM - 3:30 PM | Awards & Closing remarks

Awards & Closing remarks