Description

At the end of the day, we may look forward to the comfort of a steamy shower, the feeling of our pet warming our lap, or being wrapped in the embrace of someone we love. All of which, are defined in part, by a strong sensation of warmth that offers relief and pleasure. Though warmth may not always be social in nature, more recent perspectives suggest warmth may serve as a proxy for social connection in certain contexts. Therefore, we predicted that physical warmth, by itself, would function as a proxy for social connection to reduce threat-related brain activity in response to negative emotional images. In the current study 41 participants completed an MRI scan as they viewed emotionally evocative images from the International Affective Picture System which were rated as both negative and high in arousal. In a block design, participants held a warm, cool, and room temperature object while viewing the images. After exiting the scanner, participants rated the warmth and pleasantness of the three objects and their subjective emotional experience of viewing the images (i.e., “how aversive/pleasant did you find the pictures during this time?”). As expected, the warm object was rated as warmer and more pleasant than both the cool and room temperature objects. However, in contrast to hypotheses, the warm (vs. cool and vs. room temperature) object led to increased, rather than decreased, activity in the DACC and AI to the images. Likewise, images were experienced as more aversive when holding the warm object, over both the cool and room temperature objects. Additionally, higher ratings of aversiveness were associated with greater DACC and AI activity to the images when holding the warm object. No association emerged for the cool object. Though findings do not reflect the expected relationship of physical warmth functioning similarly as social connection, this study nevertheless reveals evidence that peripheral information such as thermal feedback affects threat-related brain activity and affective experience. Results illustrate an opportunity for further investigation of how innocuous thermal information, such as warmth, affects general and focused perception in multiple contexts.