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Tue 19 Dec, 2006 01:34 pm
Quote:High-quality marriages help to calm nerves
Public release date: 18-Dec-2006
Contact: Fariss Samarrai
University of Virginia
A University of Virginia neuroscientist has found that women under stress who hold their husbands' hands show signs of immediate relief, which can clearly be seen on their brain scans. "This is the first study of the neurological reactions to human touch in a threatening situation, and the first study to measure how the brain facilitates the health-enhancing properties of close social relationships," says Dr. James A. Coan, author of the study, which is published in the December 2006 issue of the journal Psychological Science.
Coan, an assistant professor in the U.Va. Neuroscience Graduate Program and the Department of Psychology, conducted a study involving several couples who rated themselves as highly satisfied with their marriages. Coan and colleagues designed a functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) study in which 16 married women were subjected to the threat of a very mild electric shock while they by turns held their husband's hand, the hand of a stranger (male) or no hand at all. The MRI was able to show how these women's brains responded to this handholding while in a threatening situation.
The results showed a large decrease in the brain response to threat as a function of spouse handholding, and a limited decrease in this response as a function of stranger handholding. Moreover, spouse handholding effects varied as a function of marital quality, with women in the very highest quality marriages benefiting from a very powerful decrease in threat-related brain activity, including a strong decrease in the emotional (affective) component of the brain's pain processing circuits.
Coan is expanding his functional MRI studies in collaboration with the U.Va. Department of Radiology, to continue his exploration of the neuroscience of emotion and close social relationships.
"I wanna hold your hand........"
piffle!!!
16 women under stress hold the hand of a trusted spouse, strange male, or no one.
n=16 is insufficient to draw any conclusions.
happily married woman holding strange male hand = new stress
"threatening situation" = new stress
I'll get over my piffle response when they compare trusted spouse to trusted sibling and/or parent to no hand holding as a control.
It's old research, this seems to just be the latest study. I remember seeing one of these studies before I got married, so at least a dozen years ago or so. The valentine I made for E.G. last year had an article with a similar idea as the background, as it's an idea we've come back to a lot:
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1851066#1851066
I wasn't able to find that article again when I just searched, though.
I have a good friend who is a mid-wife. She says the most calming thing for a woman in labor to do is hold the hand of her husband or her mother's.
By the way, I don't think the study is meant to indicate that ONLY husbands provide that kind of comfort -- I think it can be mothers, as Green Witch says, or sisters, or good friends. I think the idea is to differentiate between mere physical contact -- that it's some sort of pressure-point thing, or that the holder's heartbeat steadies the holdee's, or something -- and physical contact with someone who you love and trust implicitly.
What I take from this and similar studies is that trust is paramount -- in a good marriage (or any other kind of relationship), the held hand and explicit or implicit "it's OK" is believed, and the stress reaction is reduced, whereas in a bad marriage (or any other kind of relationship) the message is not necessarily believed.
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