Considering how much depends on the sense of touch, it seems surprising that more scientists haven’t taken up the subject in books for general audiences. Although some recent books have visited the science of touch within the context of broader cultural explorations (for example, Matthew Fulkerson’s The First Sense: A Philosophical Study of Human Touch, published in 2013, and Constance Classen’s 2012 text The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch), neuroscientist David J. Linden’s book Touch stands apart. Linden elevates the conversation about touch, providing an unusually detailed and original perspective. He visits all the major tactile sensations in turn—pressure and object perception, proprioception, caress, sexual pleasure, temperature sensation, pain, itch, tickling, and touch illusions—unpacking what we know about how these messages are carried from source to brain. As researchers’ knowledge about the human senses is advancing at an unprecedented rate, Linden serves as a lucid, witty guide who avoids oversimplifying the facts while exploring what is known about our tactile sensations as well as the mysteries that remain.

Linden shows that our touch circuitry powerfully affects surprising aspects of our lives, often without our realizing it. Touching a client in a gentle, nonthreatening way can garner doctors higher health care ratings and wait staff higher tips. National Basketball Association teams that exchange more high fives, fist bumps, shoulder bumps, and other celebrations through touch score more. Indeed, this sense is essential to our social bonding and to our social bonding and to our development.
Read the rest: http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/one-singular-sensation