Touch

Illuminating. Drawing on a wide range of cutting-edge scientific research, Linden provides plenty of insights into how our sense of touch shapes our experience of the world and our idea of self * Sunday Times *This book is excellent. It tells you why footballers hug each other when a goal is scored, and why there are vampire bats. Linden is very good and clear on the raw neurology * Spectator *Absorbing. The bizarre vagaries of touch affect us all, [and] all this is backed up with a good deal of hard neuroscience. Following Linden’s thread is worth it * The Times *Most of us take the tactile senses for granted. You won’t after reading this book. The best science writers infect you with their fascination for the subject - that’s exactly what Linden achieves here * BBC Focus *A treasure trove for anyone wanting to decode the frisson of a lover’s caress * Playboy *Will make you think more deeply about every itch, scrape and caress * Washington Post *Fascinating. This book has changed my life – Salley Vickers * Observer *

A touching story? A tactless comment? So elemental is the sense of touch that it permeates metaphors we live by. Linden explores the ‘weird, complex, and often counter-intuitive’ tactile system and its intimate impact on the human experience

David Linden is a professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, USA, and the award-winning author of The Accidental Mind- How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God which was a New York Times bestseller. Since 2008 he has been the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Neurophysiology, a role at the centre of the neuroscience research community. He lives in Baltimore.