SOC SCI H1E Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Human Bonding, Homeostasis, Signal-To-Noise Ratio
5 Jun 2017
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Document Summary
Today, we"re going to talk about perhaps surprising connections between sociality and well being. Touch is absolutely critical for normal human functioning: part of your physical regulation, part of your body functioning properly. Human infants, when denied an appropriate level of touch, essentially shut down: they stop producing human growth hormone and their immune responses fail. At the biological level, touch is absolutely crucial to their survival: this may be an adaptation. Nursing pups of various sorts require licking and nuzzling from the mother to grow. If there are too many pups for the number of nipples, this can reduce the number. Babies raised in orphanages: (1) tend to die at very high rates, up to 1/3 for seriously bad cases, (2) tend to be physically smaller. Lack of physical touch means that they don"t produce the hormones necessary to grow: (3) tend to have smaller brains. Cognitive deficits: (4) tend to suffer serious mental and emotional problems.
