An article was published on April 3, 2014 entitled “Dissociating the Neural Correlates of Experiencing and Imagining Affective Touch.” The authors are Molly V. Lucas, Laura C. Anderson, Danielle A. Bolling, Kevin A. Pelphrey and Martha D. Kaiser. The investigators shared that “both experiencing and viewing affective . . . touch recruit similar neural mechanisms.” An observation from earlier studies suggests that “some components involved in touch perception do not require physical sensation. . . .The anterior insula of the brain is involved in subjective feeling states and affective learning.” The investigators “sought to characterize . . . stimulus-independent activations, which may be coding the affective aspects of gentle [imagined] touch.” Their hypothesis was “that some aspects of brain mechanisms for processing touch may reflect stimulus-independent, cognitive-based, responses, which code for the affective response to touch. . . . While the posterior insula showed activation only during the physical experience of touch, the anterior insula was responsive to both experienced and imagined touch, suggesting that this region plays a role in the interpretation of the affective meaning of the touch.”
I propose from my studies that the mere imagining of touch in the prefrontal cortex generates specific wave forms that stimulate spike trains of action potentials transmitting neural codes with meaning through synaptic networks. The cognitive mind is the interpreter of the codes. That the anterior insula “plays a role in the interpretation of the affective meaning of the touch” is explained by the synaptic transmission of neural codes within specific regions of the brain that the cognitive mind “reads” through a lifelong process of learning archived in memory. It is important for neuroscientists to account for the activity of the cognitive mind in such interpretation.