Why warm hugs ground us in our own bodies

A hug does something your brain recognizes as ancient and necessary. Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have spent years trying to understand exactly what.

It turns out warmth itself — the simple transfer of heat from another person's skin to yours — speaks a language your nervous system learned before you were born. "Temperature is one of our most ancient senses," explains Dr. Laura Crucianelli, who leads this research. "Warmth is one of the earliest signals of protection. We feel it in the womb, in early caregiving, and whenever someone holds us close."

For decades, scientists treated temperature as a purely mechanical signal — your body's thermostat, nothing more. But Crucianelli and her colleague Dr. Gerardo Salvato wanted to explore something they called "thermoception": how changes in skin temperature actually shape the way you experience your own body. Their review of decades of neuroscience and psychology research, published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, reveals what they describe as "a previously overlooked pathway through which the body communicates with the brain."

When you're cold and someone wraps their arms around you, you're not just getting warmer. You're sending a cascade of signals through specialized nerve fibers in your skin that tell your brain: this is your body, and you are safe. The warmth combines with the pressure of touch, triggering the release of oxytocin and activating the neural systems linked to feeling grounded and regulated.

Why this matters for mental health

Many people living with depression, anxiety, eating disorders, or trauma experience a peculiar disconnection from their own bodies. They describe feeling like they're watching themselves from outside, or not recognizing parts of themselves as truly theirs. Researchers call this altered "body ownership," and it's a real neurological symptom, not just a feeling.

Crucianelli's work suggests that disruptions in how the brain processes temperature signals could play a role in these conditions. Some people with brain injuries affecting temperature regulation, for instance, develop an inability to recognize parts of their own bodies. The reverse might also be true: restoring that thermal dialogue between skin and brain could help people feel more anchored in themselves.

This opens a quieter kind of treatment possibility — not medication or intensive therapy, but sensory-focused interventions that work with how the body naturally communicates. A hug, in this framework, becomes a form of nervous system recalibration.

"Feeling warm touch on the skin enhances our ability to sense ourselves from the inside," Crucianelli says. "We feel, 'this is my body, and I am grounded in it.' Warm touch reminds us that we are connected, valued, and part of a social world."

The research is still early, but it points toward something intuitive that many people already know: human contact, especially warm human contact, is not a luxury. It's part of how we stay tethered to ourselves.