Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-118).

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 58-62).

Bakgrund: Beröring är en integrerad del av det mänskliga beteendet och kan öka välbefinnandet samt ge en stunds lugn och ro. Inom omvårdad har intresset för kompletterande och alternativa behandlingar ökat för att behandla demensrelaterade symtom, såsom agitation och aggressivitet. Expressiv beröring är av intresse då det är kostnadseffektivt och biverkningarna är få. Syfte: Att undersöka vilka effekter expressiv beröring har på agiterat och aggressivt beteende hos personer med demenssjukdom. Metod: Litteraturöversikt innehållande tio vetenskapliga artiklar med kvantitativ ansats. Artiklarna söktes i databaserna CINAHL, MEDLINE och PubMed. Resultat: I studierna där handmassage och akupressur erhölls minskade agitation och aggressivitet signifikant. I studier där mjukmassage och fotmassage erhölls framkom varierade resultatet och både minskningar och ökningar av agitation och aggressivitet sågs. Slutsats: Då inte alla studier var av tillräckligt hög kvalitet, var det svårt att dra slutsatser och generalisera resultatet om beröringens effekt. Det fanns dock en trend vad gäller minskat agiterat och aggressivt beteende när personer med demenssjukdom blev berörda. Klinisk betydelse: Kunskap och information om beröringens effekter för att minska agiterat och aggressivt beteende hos personer med demenssjukdom saknas. Att som sjuksköterska ha kunskap om beröringens effekter är därför av betydelse. / Background: Touch is an integral part of human behavior and can improve well-being and provide a moment of peace and quiet. In nursing, an interest in complementary and alternative therapies has increased to treat dementia-related symptoms, such as agitation and aggression. Expressive touch in the form of massage and acupressure are of interest since these treatments are cost-effective and side effects are limited. Aim: To examine the effects of expressive touch on agitated and aggressive behavior in people with dementia. Method: Literature review containing ten scientific articles with quantitative approach. Articles were searched in the databases CINAHL, MEDLINE and PubMed. Result: The findings demonstrate that when receiving hand massage and acupressure, agitation and aggression were significantly decreased. When soft massage and foot massage were received results varied, agitation and aggression both decreased and increased. Conclusion: Since not all studies were of adequate quality, it was difficult to draw conclusions and generalize the results of the power of touch. However, a trend in decreased agitated and aggressive behavior was observed when people with dementia were touched. Clinical significance: Knowledge and information about the effects of expressive touch to reduce agitated and aggressive behavior in people with dementia are missing. To have knowledge about the effects of touch are therefore of importance as a nurse.

This dissertation examines the function of shame within Christian texts and practice through the lens of affect theory and trauma studies. A focus on the deleterious effects of interred shame and shame’s role in attachment presses theology to name corporeal shame, understand it as distinguished from guilt, and recognize how it relates to attachment and human bonding. Distinguishing shame from guilt provides conceptual markers of shame, shifting the focus away from the image of the lonely, guilty sinner and toward a self both attached to others and to God. An analysis of classic theological texts along with an exploration of touch in Christian practice discloses that shame must be disinterred and faced in order to repair its negative effects and to restore its natural function in attachment. An analysis of Augustine’s The City of God reveals shame’s emergence in Augustine’s theology embodied by the notion of “covering-up,” which impedes attachment to God. In The Nature and Destiny of Man, Reinhold Niebuhr’s notions of sensuality and pride reflect shame, yet Niebuhr subsumes shame under other terms. Examining the place of shame in these major works and displaying the continual covering-over of shame in these theologian’s descriptions of the human condition exposes shame’s toxicity but also unveils shame as indicative of attachment. Augustine’s notion that the forehead serves as the seat of shame parallels affect theory’s location of affective emergence on the face and corporeally situates shame on the forehead. The final chapter displays what it would mean to take seriously the implications of affect in theological anthropology and practical theology. Both affect theory and trauma studies underscore the somatic and textual interactions that create a shamed self. This dissertation turns to the liturgical enactment of Christian practices, highlighting the importance of touch in both harm and repair. Exploring the moment of touch in the imposition of ashes on the forehead on Ash Wednesday develops touch as an affective encounter with shame. This interdisciplinary study of shame broadens insights about how Christian theologians interpret the human condition, as disinterred shame directs the self towards its greatest attachments: connection to others and to God.

abstract: Situations of sensory overload are steadily becoming more frequent as the ubiquity of technology approaches reality--particularly with the advent of socio-communicative smartphone applications, and pervasive, high speed wireless networks. Although the ease of accessing information has improved our communication effectiveness and efficiency, our visual and auditory modalities--those modalities that today's computerized devices and displays largely engage--have become overloaded, creating possibilities for distractions, delays and high cognitive load; which in turn can lead to a loss of situational awareness, increasing chances for life threatening situations such as texting while driving. Surprisingly, alternative modalities for information delivery have seen little exploration. Touch, in particular, is a promising candidate given that it is our largest sensory organ with impressive spatial and temporal acuity. Although some approaches have been proposed for touch-based information delivery, they are not without limitations including high learning curves, limited applicability and/or limited expression. This is largely due to the lack of a versatile, comprehensive design theory--specifically, a theory that addresses the design of touch-based building blocks for expandable, efficient, rich and robust touch languages that are easy to learn and use. Moreover, beyond design, there is a lack of implementation and evaluation theories for such languages. To overcome these limitations, a unified, theoretical framework, inspired by natural, spoken language, is proposed called Somatic ABC's for Articulating (designing), Building (developing) and Confirming (evaluating) touch-based languages. To evaluate the usefulness of Somatic ABC's, its design, implementation and evaluation theories were applied to create communication languages for two very unique application areas: audio described movies and motor learning. These applications were chosen as they presented opportunities for complementing communication by offloading information, typically conveyed visually and/or aurally, to the skin. For both studies, it was found that Somatic ABC's aided the design, development and evaluation of rich somatic languages with distinct and natural communication units. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Computer Science 2012

abstract: Humans are social beings, which means interpersonal relationships are important contributors to our psychological health. Our health and behavior is manifested through a dynamic cycle of interacting factors: environmental, personal, and behavioral. Contributing to this interaction, interpersonal relationships provide benefits such as increased social support and decreased loneliness. The care and attention of relationship partners are communicated in multiple ways, one of which is interpersonal touch. Although touch can communicate positive feelings and support, it can also be used negatively in certain contexts. Unwanted or forced touch occurs when an individual experiences sexual or physical trauma. Experiencing this type of trauma often results in negative psychological consequences. Exactly how sexual or physical trauma—both of which involve unwanted touch—might influence an individual’s attitudes towards touch is important to explore. If an individual feels negatively about interpersonal touch due to previous experience of trauma, this might negatively influence the amount of current touch with a partner, and also the survivor’s psychological well-being. In the current study, I proposed that previous occurrence of sexual or physical trauma would predict both decreased frequency of touch in a current intimate relationship and poorer individual well-being, and that these relations would be explained by negative touch attitudes. Results supported these hypotheses, suggesting that lingering negative touch attitudes following trauma could be an underlying mechanism affecting social and individual functioning. As seen in our model, these attitudes fully mediated the effects between previous sexual or physical trauma and individual well-being, as well as frequency of touch. This understanding can help provide further insight into the repercussions of trauma and the underlying mechanisms attributing to continued negative effects. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2018

abstract: Literature was reviewed about how synchrony occurs in infant-parent dyads, in emotion, and physiologically in couple dyads. Social baseline theory suggests that both conversation and interpersonal touch confer benefits by reducing burden on the participants through coregulatory processes. The current study examined how affectionate touch and positive conversation influenced physiological synchrony, a potential mechanism of physiological coregulation, in couples. Because synchrony is believed to occur within the autonomic nervous system, in the present study, physiological synchrony was measured using cardiac interbeat interval (IBI) as an indicator of autonomic nervous system activation. Couples were assigned to one of four conditions: interpersonal touch with positive conversation, interpersonal touch without conversation, positive conversation with no interpersonal touch, and neither interpersonal touch nor conversation. We hypothesized that 1) IBI synchrony between spouses within the real data would be significantly higher than within a phase-shuffled version of the data; and 2) synchrony would be strongest in the touch-talk condition, followed by the touch-no talk condition, followed by the talk-no touch- condition, and finally by the no touch-no talk condition. We also investigated whether there was a tendency for husbands or wives to serve as leader or follower in the four conditions. Using windowed lagged cross-correlations, we found that synchrony within the real data was stronger than synchrony within the shuffled data, suggesting that it reflects an ongoing interpersonal process. Next, we found that there was significantly greater synchrony in the touch-talk than in the touch-no talk condition, marginally greater synchrony in the touch-no talk condition than in the no touch-talk condition, and significantly greater synchrony in the no touch-talk than in the no touch-no talk conditions, suggesting that talk, rather than touch, was driving these synchrony levels. We also found that the only condition with a significant level of leading-following pattern was the no touch-talk condition. More husbands than wives led the covariation in IBI when couples were conversing but not touching. When touch was included this effect did not occur. Future research should include potential moderators such as marital satisfaction and investigate whether seeing one’s partner influences synchrony. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2018

abstract: This study investigated the potential influences of a marital interaction involving affectionate touch and/or positive relationship-focused conversation on physiological reactivity to a subsequent laboratory stress task, and whether depressive symptoms moderated these relations. It was hypothesized that 1) the stress task would cause cardiac sympathetic activation and cardiac parasympathetic withdrawal; and that physical affection and/or positive conversation would 2) reduce sympathetic activation as indicated by cardiac interbeat interval (IBI), cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP), and finger pulse transit time (FPTT) and 3) reduce parasympathetic withdrawal (as indicated by respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA) in response to stress. Further, we expected that, compared to those lower in reported depressive symptoms, those higher in depressive symptoms 4) would show blunted cardiovascular activation in response to stress across experimental conditions; and after engaging in a positive marital exchange, 5) would demonstrate a smaller interaction-related reduction in stress-related sympathetic activation; but 6) show no difference in interaction-related reduction of stress-related parasympathetic withdrawal. Participants were 183 married couples who were at least moderately happy in their marriages and in generally good health. Participants completed a measure of depression (among other questionnaires) in an online survey, then attended a 3-hour laboratory session. After measuring baseline physiology with spouses in separate rooms, couples were then randomly assigned to either touch (while sitting quietly, then hug), talk (positive conversation, but no touch), both (touch while talking, then hug), or neither (sit quietly without touching or talking). Next, participants separately performed a stress-inducing speech task about their spouses’ strengths and weaknesses. Physiological indicators were recorded throughout the stress task. While positive conversation reduced husbands’ stress-related parasympathetic withdrawal, it predicted greater stress-related activation in wives’ PEP response. Stress reactivity (as indicated by FPTT) was reduced in husbands with lower depressive symptoms when the marital exchange included only touch or only talk, whereas for husbands with more depressive symptoms, there were no effects of the marital interaction. For wives, depressive symptoms predicted blunted cardiovascular activation regardless of positive interaction condition, as illustrated by smaller stress-related reduction in FPTT responses. Furthermore, higher self-reported depressive symptoms predicted larger interaction-related decreases in stress-related IBI responses in wives who experienced spousal touch. This study builds on previous work and is the first to explore how depressive symptoms may influence the relations between affectionate touch and stress reactivity. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2018

abstract: Our ability to estimate the position of our body parts in space, a fundamentally proprioceptive process, is crucial for interacting with the environment and movement control. For proprioception to support these actions, the Central Nervous System has to rely on a stored internal representation of the body parts in space. However, relatively little is known about this internal representation of arm position. To this end, I developed a method to map proprioceptive estimates of hand location across a 2-d workspace. In this task, I moved each subject's hand to a target location while the subject's eyes were closed. After returning the hand, subjects opened their eyes to verbally report the location of where their fingertip had been. Then, I reconstructed and analyzed the spatial structure of the pattern of estimation errors. In the first couple of experiments I probed the structure and stability of the pattern of errors by manipulating the hand used and tactile feedback provided when the hand was at each target location. I found that the resulting pattern of errors was systematically stable across conditions for each subject, subject-specific, and not uniform across the workspace. These findings suggest that the observed structure of pattern of errors has been constructed through experience, which has resulted in a systematically stable internal representation of arm location. Moreover, this representation is continuously being calibrated across the workspace. In the next two experiments, I aimed to probe the calibration of this structure. To this end, I used two different perturbation paradigms: 1) a virtual reality visuomotor adaptation to induce a local perturbation, 2) and a standard prism adaptation paradigm to induce a global perturbation. I found that the magnitude of the errors significantly increased to a similar extent after each perturbation. This small effect indicates that proprioception is recalibrated to a similar extent regardless of how the perturbation is introduced, suggesting that sensory and motor changes may be two independent processes arising from the perturbation. Moreover, I propose that the internal representation of arm location might be constructed with a global solution and not capable of local changes. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Bioengineering 2012

Diversos estudos têm demonstrado a participação da ocitocina em promover a interação social presente no comportamento materno, sexual e interpessoal, bem como em processos de memória e aprendizagem. Recentemente, a influência da ocitocina sobre a modulação da percepção da dor também tem sido discutida. Estudos histológicos mostraram a presença de receptores de ocitocina em diferentes áreas cerebrais, como a substância cinzenta periaquedutal, envolvida no controle descendente da dor e o hipocampo, envolvido nos mecanismos de memória e aprendizagem aversiva. Este trabalho teve como objetivo investigar os efeitos centrais da ocitocina intranasal sobre a percepção somatossensorial e a memória da dor em humanos. O estudo foi realizado com 31 voluntários do sexo masculino, possuindo idades entre 18 e 45 anos. Para avaliar a influência da ocitocina sobre a percepção e a memória da dor, grupos placebo (solução salina) e experimental (ocitocina intranasal 24 UI ou 40 UI) foram submetidos a Testes de Quantificação Sensorial- QST, que envolveram a aplicação de estímulos térmicos (frio e calor) e mecânicos, a fim de identificar os limiares de detecção e de dor. A memória da dor percebida foi acessada pela Escala Visual Analógica, apresentada após a administração de ocitocina. Os resultados encontrados foram significativos para o efeito da ocitocina sobre o limiar de detecção mecânico (p<0,05), para o grupo ocitocina 40 UI. Ainda, foi possível observar uma tendência à atenuação da memória, frente ao estímulo doloroso frio (p= 0.09). Os demais testes realizados não apresentaram resultados significativos. Estes dados sugerem que a ocitocina, que também é liberada pelo toque não-nocivo, pode aumentar a percepção do toque cutâneo, favorecendo o estabelecimento de vínculos sociais, que são fortemente modulados pela ocitocina. Entretanto, não influencia na detecção de estímulos térmicos inócuos ou na detecção de dor mecânica e térmica, bem como na memória da dor ao calor e ao frio, apesar da clara tendência a uma possível modulação da memória da dor ao frio, o que sugere que os efeitos centrais da ocitocina podem influenciar seletivamente a memória da dor, dependendo da relevância psicobiológica do estímulo / In addition to its role in childbirth labor and lactation, oxytocin is a well-known neurohormone, having several prosocial effects. Moreover, oxytocin seems to play a significant modulatory role in painful experiences, due to its participation in central and peripheral processing of nociceptive somatosensory information. Histological studies have shown the presence of oxytocin receptors in different brain areas, such as periaqueductal gray matter, involved in descending pain control and the hippocampus, involved in memory mechanisms and aversive learning. This work aimed to investigate the effects of intranasal oxytocin on somatosensory perception and pain memory in humans. The participants were 31 healthy men (ages ranging from 18 to 45 years old). To evaluate the influence of oxytocin on the perception and memory of pain, placebo (saline) and experimental groups (intranasal oxytocin 24 IU or 40 IU) were submitted to QST- Quantitative Sensory Testing, which involved the application of thermal stimuli (cold and heat) and mechanical, in order to identify the thresholds of detection and pain. The memory of perceived pain was accessed by the Visual Analog Scale, presented after the administration of oxytocin. The results were significant for the effect of oxytocin on the mechanical detection threshold (p <0.05) for the oxytocin group 40 IU. The data showed a significant increase in tactile perception in an experimental 40 IU oxytocin group. We suggest that this effect could be the basis for the oxytocin-bonding effect via touch. Also, it was possible to observe a tendency to attenuation of the memory, in front of the cold painful stimulus (p = 0.09). The other tests performed did not present significant results. However, it does not influence the detection of harmless thermal stimuli or the detection of mechanical and thermal pain, as well as the memory of pain to heat and cold, despite the clear tendency to a possible modulation of pain memory to cold, suggesting that the central effects of oxytocin may selectively influence pain memory, depending on the psychobiological relevance of the stimulus