“Touch seems to be such an important tool for enhancing social cooperation and affiliation that we have evolved a special physical route along which those subliminal feelings of social connection travel from skin to brain. That is, scientists have discovered a particular kind of nerve fiber in people’s skin—especially in the face and arms—that appears to have developed specifically to transmit the pleasantness of social touch… they are connected directly to the areas of the brain such as the insular cortex, which is associated with emotion.” p. 137

Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rues Your Behavior, by Leonard Mlodinow