C-tactile afferents form a distinct channel signaling pleasant, affective aspects of touch. They have been hypothesized to project, with other unmyelinated afferents, in lamina I-anterolateral pathways. However, recent animal literature highlights the complex functional organization of tactile processing in the spinal cord. Furthermore, evidence in humans indicates spinal transmission of affective touch involves non-spinothalamic pathways. This literature is considered in the context of peripheral inputs signaling affective touch. The emerging evidence broadly indicates that the brain needs to decode ascending information from convergent inputs and distributed spinal pathways to generate affective behavioral responses. However, there are significant disparities between mice and humans which raise questions of inter-species translation and the nature of affective touch itself.

C 触觉传入形成一个独特的通道，发出令人愉悦的、情感的触觉方面的信号。假设它们与其他无髓鞘传入神经一起投射在 I 层前外侧通路中。然而，最近的动物文献强调了脊髓中触觉处理的复杂功能组织。此外，人类的证据表明情感触觉的脊​​髓传递涉及非脊髓丘脑通路。这些文献是在外围输入信号情感触摸的背景下考虑的。新出现的证据广泛表明，大脑需要解码来自汇聚输入和分布式脊髓通路的上行信息，以产生情感行为反应。然而，