Jena Antonelli
October 16, 2007
Essential Touch
Through the five main senses, humans and animals alike can learn about the world that surrounds them, how to survive, and how to enjoy the life that is given. Sight gives a visual painting before the eyes of the viewer. Smell and taste work together providing memories, warnings, and simple pleasures and allows the enjoyment of foods and liquids, respectively. In addition, hearing translates vibrations in the hear to familiar sounds and voices permitting the participation in verbal communication. Finally, touch provides a sensation all over the body in which “feeling” becomes a reality. However, touch is quite an extraordinary sense, perhaps the most important of them all. Of course, every sense is significant, unique, and essential to learn and appreciate the environment, but a lack of touch in either direction would surely be fatal in a mental, emotional, and perhaps physical aspect. Many impaired victims can live a full life without hearing, seeing, smelling, or tasting, but not without touch. The sense of touch, in a positive manner, is the most important out of the five senses because it applies a connection with the surrounding environment, perceives pain, and releases hormones that bring pleasurable emotions.
To begin, touch is the link between humans and their connection to the surrounding world. During the Paleolithic age in which homosapiens appeared, touch, as well as the other senses, were primarily employed for survival. Now, however, with a more advanced life, senses can be used not only for survival necessities, but for pleasure and enjoyment. For example, touch benefits babies into growing faster and healthier. Ackerman notes, “Massaged babies gain weight as much as 50 percent faster than unmassaged babies. They’re more active, alert, and responsive, more aware of their surroundings, better able to tolerate noise, and they orient themselves faster and are emotionally more in control (73).” Also, when something touches their cheek, babies turn toward that touch, open their mouth, and vigorously root for a nipple (Myers 101). A third example is greetings. In most societies, people greet each other with some form of touch whether it be a hug, kiss, or handshake. All of these and more symbolize a connection between the two. Thus, connections to the surrounding world become possible through the sense of touch.
Secondly, touch is the source of pain. As unwelcome as it is, pain is essentially important to the survival of human kind as well as animal kind. Pain exists to let the brain and body know that there lies a problem, change, or damage to a part of the body. One example concerns the hot stove. When the hand comes into contact with the heat source, pain receptors transfer and are received by the spinal cord which immediately sends out a signal to reflex the hand away from the heat source to prevent a harmful burn. With out the sensation of pain, a hand would burn to a crisp without noticing the pain. A second example is a broken bone. Usually, excruitating pain accompanies a broken bone, whose purpose is to inform the victim (brain) that the bone is indeed broken. With out pain, there lies a chance in which injuries, sicknesses, diseases, and minor inconveniences could be fatally dangerous. In fact, that rare disorder in which one cannot feel pain, congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA), rules the life of a young boy named Roberto. CIPA is the most severe and fatal type of the seven types of hereditary sensory and autonomic neuropathy, or HSAN (Gajilan 2). His mother notes, “If you could imagine when you bite your tongue how bad it hurts. At one point, you couldn’t even distinguish that his tongue was his tongue” (2). Therefore, pain, a part of touch, is necessary to the well being and survival of human kind.
Lastly, a positive sense of touch releases multiple hormones. More importantly, hormones control most aspects of human life. For example Berman remarks, “Physical contact releases oxytocin — appropriately nicknamed the ‘cuddle hormone.’ Since oxytocin spikes in response to touching, the more you touch, the better you feel and the more you want to touch” (1). Even with out science, one can definitely feel more positive feelings with a loved one and their loving touch. Vice versa, a lack of stimulus and touch very early on causes the stress hormone, cortisol to be released which creates a toxic brain environment and can damage certain brain structures and harm normal child development (Young 3). Thus, touch interferes with the releasing of hormones which correlate with every day life.
All in all, touch is the most important sense because of the connection with the world, the perception of pain, and the releasing of hormones. Imagine a life in which touch does not exist. Life would merely be like a film playing before the eyes of the beholder, almost lifeless. A life with out any of the other senses is possible, but with out touch, life would be empty with many voids.
Works Cited
Ackerman, Diane. A Natural History of the Senses. New York: A Division of Random House, 1993.
Bermanm Laura. The Six Sense of Sex, Part 2: Touch. 2007. 9 October 2007.
“Health.” World Without Pain is Hell. CNN. 28 September 2006..
Myers, David G. Exploring Psychology. 7th ed. New York: Worth, 2007.
Young, Cori. Child Development. 15 October 2007. .
