□ Wang Xin
When I was collating information about the epidemic, I found that some healthcare workers showed psychological stress responses due to limited touch, such as anxiety, loss of appetite and sleep disorders. Of course, we would like to express our concern and respect to these health care workers, and the prevention and mitigation options will be mentioned at the end of the article. We will also wear masks for the next period of time, keep our distance when meeting, cannot shake hands, and to some extent face the situation of "lack of touch".
All sensations are important, but unlike sensations such as sight and hearing, touch does not provide much "useful information." When we look back on this day, we often think of what we saw, what we heard, what we tasted, and rarely think of "what we touched", and the sense of touch seems irrelevant.
However, this feeling is already accompanied by the growth of the fetus in the womb. After the child is born, he feels his own existence in contact with his mother and the things around him, and gradually distinguishes between himself and the outside world. Children generally like to touch novel objects, like to squeeze each other around, the feeling of the skin is real, the object's soft and hard, thick, light and heavy signals are transmitted to the brain by thousands of receptors in the skin, so that he (she) feels the diversity and abundance of the world.
Touch is a long-standing feeling. Imagine the ancient sea, where flower-like anemones (spiny animals) stretch out their soft tentacles and sway in the seawater, if they touch small fish and shrimp, grab it and eat it, if they touch a big fish or a hard clam, they will continue to wait without doing anything. Insects and fish are also sensitive to touch, relying on antennae or lateral line receptors to gain a sense of touch to catch prey or defend against predators. Mammalian touch comes from the skin, human fingertips put two milligrams of objects can be detected, as long as the finger is lightly touched, you can know whether the contact is paper, textiles, plastic, wood or steel, experienced people can distinguish between silk and imitation silk, and even the proportion of various components in the mixed fabric.
According to the British historian Taylor, "touch is a great feeling". The reason why human beings love, hate, move people and be moved by people is through the touch of the skin.
Human contact is accompanied by emotional exchanges, and the mother's caressing of the baby, the hug between the partners, the playfulness between friends, the handshake between strangers, etc. all convey the message of love. On the other hand, we are reluctant to have physical contact with people we don't like because it can bring about feelings of not being accepted, or even offended.
The sense of touch is so wonderful that it occupies a special area in the cerebral cortex, which is called the somatic sensory projection area of the cortex, which receives haptic signals from various parts of the body. Somatosensory zones were drawn by Canadian neurosurgeon Penfield. He incidentally stimulated a certain part of the cerebral cortex during surgery on a patient with epilepsy and asked the patient to report how he felt. Patients reported a sensation of contact or tingling in different parts of the body, for example, stimulation of area a produces a sensation of the lips, stimulation of area b produces a feeling of fingers, and stimulation of area C produces a sensation of the legs. Local correspondence can be obtained through the surgery of a single patient, and the "puzzle" of the sensory projection region of the entire body can be obtained through the surgery of multiple patients. The more sensitive the sense of touch, the larger the sensory projection area, and the human lips, tongue, eyes, and fingers are all places where the sense of touch is very sharp.
In daily life, we rarely lose our sense of touch, unless there are skin diseases, burns, nerve damage and other diseases. During the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers rescuing patients are required to wear disposable work hats, protective glasses, medical protective masks, workwear jackets, disposable protective clothing, disposable latex gloves, disposable shoe covers, and even full-blown respiratory protectors or positive pressure head covers. After work, healthcare workers continue to isolate and have no contact with their families. This experience is similar to losing touch and can easily cause emotional abnormalities. The psychologist's advice is to let the medical staff know about the possible mood swings in advance and be mentally prepared; let the medical staff rest in shifts and make some compensation during the break, such as taking a comfortable hot bath.
If we are also facing a similar problem of tactile limitation, we may wish to give ourselves some psychological relief, change ourselves into a comfortable nightgown or a pair of light slippers, and feel the beauty of touch while exquisite life.
To borrow a verse from Zhang Jiajia, "This world is beautiful. When the sun is shining, the trees are full of flowers, the rainy day is a pool of ripples, the sun sweeps through the city, the breeze crosses the fingertips... "Having such a beautiful feeling is already a gift from heaven, no matter how the epidemic changes, at this moment we are still living in a miracle, feeling the clear and pleasant breeze blowing."
(The author is an associate professor at Central China Normal University and a member of the Chinese Society for Neuroscience)