Language of touch: Biological aspects of social touch perception and the system of tactile communicative signals

Social touch interactions and touch communication have gained much attention due to the recent discovery of C-tactile system in human: a separate sensory system serving a sole purpose of affi liating people socially and emotionally by providing unconditional positive reinforcement to human gentle touch. The present article is a multidisciplinary research aimed to integrate current frameworks and models of touch communication and to establish a semiotic model and classifi cation of touch gestures.