Touch Matters

Handshakes, Hugs, High Fives, and the New Science on How Touch Can Enhance Your Well Being

By: Michael Banissy

Narrated by: Michael Banissy

An exploration of the new science behind our most underappreciated sense and why we need to harness the power of touch for our health and well-being.

Every day, we use our sense of touch to navigate the world. A handshake, a pat on the shoulder, a hug—all essential touches that make up our daily lives. In Touch Matters, Professor Michael Banissy brings together diverse scientific insights from the world's largest study on touch with takeaways on how to enhance your levels of touch for a happier, healthier life. The audiobook explains why touch is essential to our well-being, the role it plays in our relationships, friendships, in the bedroom, workplace, in team activities such as sports, and much more.

Banissy's latest research explores:

• Our "touch personalities"
• Touch starvation
• How touch defines our relationships and self-esteem
• The impact of touch on our physical and mental health

This is a fascinating window into one of our most important and basic senses and how to harness its power.

Features original research from "The Touch Test": Touch Matters is based on one of Banissy's most recent projects—the Touch Test—a science and broadcast collaboration with the BBC and Wellcome Collection. This project explored attitudes and experiences of touch via the world's largest contemporary survey on the topic, public exhibitions, and a series of broadcast programs focused on the topic of touch that received worldwide attention. The project had approximately 40,000 participants from 113 countries.

Offers guidance on communicating and connecting in our daily and professional lives: As we return to office work and live in a world where touch has become loaded with meaning, this book will help people understand how important touch is and the role it plays in every aspect of our lives, from relationships and friendships to the workplace and team activities and much more.

Perfect for:

• Those interested in science, psychology, and self-help
• Fans of James Nestor's Breath, Marc Brackett's Permission to Feel, Bill Bryson's The Body, Mark Miodownik's Stuff Matters
• Adults and parents of children resuming in-person activities including going back to the office, returning to school, traveling, and socializing
• Those interested in learning more about the science of touch, touch starvation, and how important touch is to child/human development
• People struggling with depression or anxiety around physical contact

©2022 Michael Banissy (P)2022 Chronicle Prism

This book touches me intellectually

This is a delightful, well-organized, and in-depth book on why we like being touched and what we can do to further leverage the sense of touch - the biological, neurological, and psychological roots of why we like touching and being touched.

It has plenty of examples and scientific explanations of how and why we benefit from the sense of touch. It also highlights the benefits of touching and being touched. Living in a fast-paced and post-COVID isolated steel jungle, we all can use some reminders of how the soft physical human touch is part of our nature.

I appreciate books narrated by the authors, and Professor Banissy has a soothing and even-toned reading style.

If you like this book and want to know more about our other senses, check out "Delicious: The Evolution of Flavor and How It Made Us Human" by Robert Dunn and Monica Sanchez" (2021) on taste, "This Is Your Brain on Music" by Daniel J. Levitin (2020) on hearing, and "Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind" by Sandra Blakeslee and V. S. Ramachandran, which has some great insights on sight.

If you are looking for specialized discussion from fun neurological perspectives, try "Side Effects: How Left-Brain Right-Brain Differences Shape Everyday Behavior" by Lorin J. Elias PhD (2022) on the left-right brain connection, "Your Brain on Art: How Art Transforms Our Brains" by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, and "Perception: How Our Bodies Shape Our Minds" by Dennis Proffitt and Drake Baer (2022) on brain-body connection.

My top favorite books on neurology are "A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins (2022), "Zero to Birth: How the Human Brain Is Built" by W.A. Harris (2022), and "The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human" by V. S. Ramachandran (2011).