Holding hand

Got this from my friend, very interesting. Adding one more thing that scientific can prove. :)

from nytimes.com
Holding Loved One's Hand Can Calm Jittery Neurons
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: January 31, 2006

Married women under extreme stress who reach out and
hold their husbands' hands feel immediate relief,
neuroscientists have found in what they say is the
first study of how human touch affects the neural
response to threatening situations.

The soothing effect of the touch could be seen in
scans of areas deep in the brain that are involved in
registering emotional and physical alarm.

The women received significantly more relief from
their husbands' touch than from a stranger's, and
those in particularly close marriages were most deeply
comforted by their husbands' hands, the study found.

The findings help explain one of the longest-standing
puzzles in social science: why married men and women
are healthier on average than their peers. Husbands
and wives who are close tend to limit each other's
excesses like drinking and smoking but not enough to
account for their better health compared with singles,
researchers say.

"This is very imaginative, cutting-edge science,
linking this complex response to stress to different
areas of the brain," said Dr. Ronald Glaser, director
of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at
Ohio State University, who was not involved in the
study.

In the study, to appear in the journal Psychological
Science this year, neuroscientists at the University
of Wisconsin and the University of Virginia used
newspaper advertisements to recruit 16 couples from
the Madison, Wis., region. The couples were all rated
as very happily married on an in-depth questionnaire
asking about coping styles, intimacy and mutual
interests.

Lying in the jaws of an M.R.I. scanning machine and
knowing that they would periodically receive a mild
electric shock to an ankle, the women were noticeably
apprehensive. Brain images showed peaks of activation
in regions involved in anticipating pain, heightening
physical arousal and regulating negative emotions,
among other systems.

But the moment that they felt their husbands' hands —
the men reached into the imaging machine — each
woman's activity level plunged in all the regions
gearing up for the threat. A stranger's hand also
provided some comfort, though less so.

"The effect of this simple gesture of social support
is that the brain and body don't have to work as hard,
they're less stressed in response to a threat," said
Dr. James A. Coan, a psychologist at the University of
Virginia and the study's lead author. His co-authors
were Dr. Hillary Schaefer and Dr. Richard J. Davidson
of the University of Wisconsin.

Relaxing in the face of a perceived threat is not
always a good idea. The brain's alarm system, which
prompts the release of stress hormones that increase
heart rate and move blood to the muscles, prepares
people to fight or run for their lives, researchers
say.

But this system often becomes overactive in situations
that are nagging but not life threatening like worries
over relationships, deadlines, money or homework. Easy
access to an affectionate touch in these moments — or
to a hug, a back rub or more — "is a very good thing,
is deeply soothing," Dr. Coan said.

The most profoundly comforting hand-holding was
between "supercouples," whose scores on the marriage
questionnaire reflected a extremely close
relationship, the study found. The brain region
involved in anticipating pain was particularly
sensitive to this marital quality, suggesting that a
touch between close partners can blunt the sensation
of physical pain, which is related to the level of
anticipation.

All of which also explains why the withdrawal or
absence of affectionate touch can be so upsetting. In
research published late last year, Dr. Glaser and his
wife, Dr. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, reported that
blisters lingered longer during marital strife.

And rejection, the ultimate withdrawal of touch,
registers in the brain much like an ankle shock, said
Dr. Lucy Brown, a neuroscientist at the Albert
Einstein College of Medicine. Fear of the shocks
activated a region in the brain "that we saw activated
in people looking at a beloved who had recently
rejected them," Dr. Brown wrote in an e-mail message.

"Love has its risks," she added. "It can make us very
unhappy," too.