ArticleCommunications biology2025
Tactile stimulation reverses painful stimuli outcomes via PVN-VTA oxytocin circuitry and dopaminergic regulation.
Article in Communications biology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Social touch-like tactile stimulation alleviates stress-induced anxiety-like behavior by enhancing the oxytocin level in the prefrontal cortex.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Circuit logic of oxytocin and vasopressin complementary actions.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Review
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Authors and funding
18 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
Newborn mammals often encounter painful stimuli (PS)-such as trampling, retrieval by parental incisors, or conspecific aggression-that can disrupt neural and behavioral development. Parental tactile care, including licking and grooming, is thought to buffer these effects, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Using mandarin voles, a highly social species, we showed that postnatal back brushing, a proxy for affiliative tactile stimulation, reversed the negative impact of early tail pinching on emotional and social behaviors. Back brushing notably reversed the reduction in activities of oxytocin (OXT) neurons in the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) and activities of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) induced by early tail pinching. Chemogenetic and optogenetic activation of PVN-VTA OXT neuron terminals reduced anxiety, increased sociality, and enhanced dopamine (DA) release in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) of animals with PS. These effects were reversed by oxytocin receptor (OXTR) antagonism in the VTA. Conversely, inhibition of this circuit produced opposite effects. At the molecular level, brushing reversed PS-induced hypermethylation of Drd1, Drd2, and Nr3c1, as well as broader transcriptomic shifts in the NAc. Our findings uncover a tactile-oxytocin-dopamine pathway underlying resilience to early-life pain and highlight conserved mechanisms through which social touch supports emotional brain development.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.