We focus on social touch as a paradigmatic case of the embodied, cognitive, and metacognitive processes involved in social, affective regulation. Social touch appears to contribute three interrelated but distinct functions to affective regulation. First, it regulates affects by fulfilling embodied predictions about social proximity and attachment. Second, caregiving touch, such as warming an infant, regulates affect by socially enacting homeostatic control and co-regulation of physiological states. Third, affective touch such as gentle stroking or tickling regulates affect by allostatic regulation of the salience and epistemic gain of particular experiences in given contexts and timescales. These three functions of affective touch are most likely mediated, at least partly, by different neurobiological processes, including convergent hedonic, dopaminergic and analgesic, opioidergic pathways for the attachment function, ‘calming’ autonomic and endocrine pathways for the homeostatic function, while the allostatic function may be mediated by oxytocin release and related ‘salience’ neuromodulators and circuits.

我们专注于社会接触作为涉及社会情感调节的具身、认知和元认知过程的典型案例。社会接触似乎对情感调节贡献了三个相互关联但又截然不同的功能。首先，它通过实现关于社会接近和依恋的具体预测来调节影响。其次，护理触摸，例如温暖婴儿，通过社会制定的稳态控制和生理状态的共同调节来调节情感。第三，诸如轻轻抚摸或搔痒之类的情感触摸通过对特定环境和时间尺度下特定体验的显着性和认知增益的异位性调节来调节情感。情感触觉的这三种功能很可能至少部分是由不同的神经生物学过程介导的，包括趋同享乐、