They often say that touch is really my favorite sense.

Touch is very important for the way we perceive our own body and we perceive the boundaries

of our body.

This is Laura Kruginelli.

She's a cognitive neuroscientist and experimental psychologist who researches touch.

Her work explores how touch can create a feeling of body ownership.

The feeling that our body belongs to us, that it is us.

Traditionally, the theory goes that this body ownership, this sense of self comes first.

And then we have to learn how to relate to other people.

But Laura and others have developed the opposite theory.

Before birth, we are really a body within a body.

So after birth, we need to learn the boundaries of our own body.

As newborn, thanks to the touch of other people, we gradually are able to recognize what

is self and what is other.

Touch is the only sense that's always reciprocal.

You cannot touch without being touched.

Like when we touch someone's skin, we can't help but notice our own.

For our first episode this season, we're sharing a handful of stories that explore the ways

touch can build our relationship with our body.

And the ways it can act as a bridge or a barrier between us and the world.

I'm Allison Baringer, and this is bodies.

I'm Shana Redmond.

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