ABSTRACT
Behaviors as ubiquitous as play, found throughout the animal kingdom, have clearly evolved to serve an evolutionary benefit to survival. From the perspective of a neuroethologist we can best understand such behaviors by teasing out the underlying neural mechanisms that drive them, and here we find that one sense in particular may well be playing an important role in the type of social bonding that play provides – the sense of touch. Recent research has identified a special class of touch nerves in the skin of the body, called the c-tactile afferent (CT), that code for the affective and emotional properties of touch, such as that experienced during play behaviors. The initial interest in CTs had focused on their role during early life nurturing care where tactile neglect is known to have a devastating effect on neurodevelopment. However, it appears there may be a second critical stage in brain development where CTs may also play a critical role – the play behaviors we see during adolescence.
