Why Your Brain Reacts to Touch You Don’t Even Feel, Scientists Decode The Millisecond Mystery

Last Updated:November 26, 2025, 08:00 IST

A new study shows the brain simulates touch within milliseconds of seeing it, rapidly decoding sensation and emotion. Experts say this fast mirroring shapes empathy and behaviour.

Touch is often described as the first language humans learn. Long before children speak their first word, they make sense of the world through the warmth of their parents’ hands or the soft brush of a caregiver’s fingers. Recent research shows that touch is not confined to skin or nerve endings.

Even the act of seeing someone being touched can activate the brain’s own machinery — sometimes so vividly that the observer feels a faint echo of the sensation. In simpler terms, when we see someone being touched, our brains simulate how it feels automatically.

Touch is usually thought of as a sense that comes from the skin, but vision also shapes how the body understands contact. This link is clear in the well-known rubber hand illusion, where people can start to feel that a fake hand is their own if they see it being stroked in the same way as their hidden real hand.

A new study, conducted by researchers at Western Sydney University and published in November 2025, highlighted how the brain simulates tactile sensations during observed touch. The research revealed a striking finding: the brain decodes the sensory, emotional, and even painful qualities of observed touch far earlier than previously understood.

The researchers highlighted that when someone observes another person being touched, the brain responds with remarkable speed and precision. In the study, researchers used EEG to monitor brain activity millisecond by millisecond as participants watched hundreds of short videos showing various forms of touch, including gentle brush strokes, firm presses and sharp contact with a knife.

Machine-learning analysis showed that within just 60 milliseconds, the brain could already distinguish key details, such as whether the hand in the scene appeared from a first-person or third-person perspective, and whether it was a left or right hand. By around 110 milliseconds, the brain began processing the sensory qualities of the touch, rapidly evaluating how the contact might feel — whether soft and tingling like a brush or sharp and painful like a knife tip.

By approximately 260 milliseconds, the brain started registering emotional information, identifying whether the touch appeared soothing, threatening or painful. These results show that in less than a third of a second, the brain converts a simple visual scene into a detailed understanding of who is being touched, how it might feel and what emotional meaning the touch carries.

Understanding How the Brain Simulates Observed Touch

Explaining the study’s core idea, Dr Rahul Chandhok, Head Consultant–Mental Health & Behavioural Science at Artemis Hospitals, notes that the research shows how the brain “simulates” touch the moment we observe someone else being touched. He says the brain reacts as though the touch is happening to us, creating a quick internal simulation of the sensation. This rapid mirroring, he adds, helps people instantly understand others’ experiences, even without conscious effort.

Psychologist Kshama Dwivedi, Director at Swami Vivekanand Group of Institutes, echoes this, adding that the study aligns with mirror-system theories proposed by researchers such as Iacoboni and Keysers. According to her, the brain’s somatosensory and visual areas begin responding within milliseconds, forming quick internal models that support social understanding.

How the Brain Distinguishes Between Our Touch and Others’ Touch

On how the brain tells the difference between touch to oneself and touch observed in someone else, Dr Chandhok explains that the mind uses two extremely fast processes. First, the brain mirrors the sensation based on what is seen; then, just milliseconds later, it cross-checks signals from one’s own body to verify whether the touch is real. This prevents confusion and stops the body from reacting as if every observed touch is happening personally.

Dwivedi expands on this mechanism, stating that the brain compares internal physiological data with external visual cues in two phases. If the skin or proprioceptive system does not show matching signals, higher-order parietal and premotor areas classify the touch as “other-directed.” She points out that this self–other boundary process follows established social-neuroscience models and research on the “social brain.”

Introducing Vicarious Touch in Therapy Sessions

Bringing this concept into therapy, Dr Chandhok says vicarious touch can help clients understand how closely the mind and body are connected. When someone flinches after seeing another person get pricked by a needle, he explains, it is simply the brain echoing the observed experience — a normal response rooted in empathy.

Dwivedi adds that therapists can present this as the brain’s natural way of interpreting the world around us, referencing theories on bodily awareness by van der Kolk. She emphasises that understanding such internal responses helps clients regulate emotions, recognise boundaries, and interpret strong or subtle bodily reactions without distress.

Mirroring Touch vs Mirroring Pain and Emotions

Comparing touch-mirroring to other types of embodied simulation, Dr Chandhok highlights that similar neural networks are involved in copying feelings, pain, and emotional states. While all forms of mirroring support social connection, he says touch mirroring is the fastest because it uses the body’s tactile system. Emotional empathy and pain recognition take slightly longer, requiring deeper processing.

Dwivedi elaborates that different components of the embodied simulation system activate depending on whether the brain is mirroring touch, pain, or emotions. Touch mirroring is sensory-driven and extremely rapid, empathy for pain leans more on affective processes and defensive responses, and emotion recognition depends on facial cues, context, and prefrontal-limbic circuits. Despite differences in timing and depth, she notes that all depend on shared neural architecture.

Why Some People Cringe or Tingle While Others Don’t

Explaining why some people physically cringe or feel tingling when watching someone else being touched, Dr Chandhok says that mirror-touch systems vary in sensitivity. Some people have more active circuits or stronger emotional sensitivity, while others naturally filter out such sensory information. Personality, past experiences, and emotional attunement all shape these reactions.

Dwivedi adds that differences in sensorimotor resonance, baseline empathy levels, interoceptive awareness, and life experiences — such as caregiving or trauma — can influence how intensely someone responds to observed touch. She emphasises that these responses lie on a continuum and are all part of normal human variation.

The latest study reveals a truth about human connection: the brain is never a passive witness. It mirrors, anticipates and emotionally registers the experiences of others even before conscious awareness takes hold. Through rapid neural signatures and shared affective pathways, the act of simply watching another person being touched becomes a bridge between bodies and minds.

Touch is usually thought of as a sense that comes from the skin, but vision also shapes how the body understands contact. This link is clear in the well-known rubber hand illusion, where people can start to feel that a fake hand is their own if they see it being stroked in the same way as their hidden real hand.

A new study, conducted by researchers at Western Sydney University and published in November 2025, highlighted how the brain simulates tactile sensations during observed touch. The research revealed a striking finding: the brain decodes the sensory, emotional, and even painful qualities of observed touch far earlier than previously understood.

The researchers highlighted that when someone observes another person being touched, the brain responds with remarkable speed and precision. In the study, researchers used EEG to monitor brain activity millisecond by millisecond as participants watched hundreds of short videos showing various forms of touch, including gentle brush strokes, firm presses and sharp contact with a knife.

Machine-learning analysis showed that within just 60 milliseconds, the brain could already distinguish key details, such as whether the hand in the scene appeared from a first-person or third-person perspective, and whether it was a left or right hand. By around 110 milliseconds, the brain began processing the sensory qualities of the touch, rapidly evaluating how the contact might feel — whether soft and tingling like a brush or sharp and painful like a knife tip.

By approximately 260 milliseconds, the brain started registering emotional information, identifying whether the touch appeared soothing, threatening or painful. These results show that in less than a third of a second, the brain converts a simple visual scene into a detailed understanding of who is being touched, how it might feel and what emotional meaning the touch carries.

Understanding How the Brain Simulates Observed Touch

Explaining the study’s core idea, Dr Rahul Chandhok, Head Consultant–Mental Health & Behavioural Science at Artemis Hospitals, notes that the research shows how the brain “simulates” touch the moment we observe someone else being touched. He says the brain reacts as though the touch is happening to us, creating a quick internal simulation of the sensation. This rapid mirroring, he adds, helps people instantly understand others’ experiences, even without conscious effort.

Psychologist Kshama Dwivedi, Director at Swami Vivekanand Group of Institutes, echoes this, adding that the study aligns with mirror-system theories proposed by researchers such as Iacoboni and Keysers. According to her, the brain’s somatosensory and visual areas begin responding within milliseconds, forming quick internal models that support social understanding.

How the Brain Distinguishes Between Our Touch and Others’ Touch

On how the brain tells the difference between touch to oneself and touch observed in someone else, Dr Chandhok explains that the mind uses two extremely fast processes. First, the brain mirrors the sensation based on what is seen; then, just milliseconds later, it cross-checks signals from one’s own body to verify whether the touch is real. This prevents confusion and stops the body from reacting as if every observed touch is happening personally.

Dwivedi expands on this mechanism, stating that the brain compares internal physiological data with external visual cues in two phases. If the skin or proprioceptive system does not show matching signals, higher-order parietal and premotor areas classify the touch as “other-directed.” She points out that this self–other boundary process follows established social-neuroscience models and research on the “social brain.”

Introducing Vicarious Touch in Therapy Sessions

Bringing this concept into therapy, Dr Chandhok says vicarious touch can help clients understand how closely the mind and body are connected. When someone flinches after seeing another person get pricked by a needle, he explains, it is simply the brain echoing the observed experience — a normal response rooted in empathy.

Dwivedi adds that therapists can present this as the brain’s natural way of interpreting the world around us, referencing theories on bodily awareness by van der Kolk. She emphasises that understanding such internal responses helps clients regulate emotions, recognise boundaries, and interpret strong or subtle bodily reactions without distress.

Mirroring Touch vs Mirroring Pain and Emotions

Comparing touch-mirroring to other types of embodied simulation, Dr Chandhok highlights that similar neural networks are involved in copying feelings, pain, and emotional states. While all forms of mirroring support social connection, he says touch mirroring is the fastest because it uses the body’s tactile system. Emotional empathy and pain recognition take slightly longer, requiring deeper processing.

Dwivedi elaborates that different components of the embodied simulation system activate depending on whether the brain is mirroring touch, pain, or emotions. Touch mirroring is sensory-driven and extremely rapid, empathy for pain leans more on affective processes and defensive responses, and emotion recognition depends on facial cues, context, and prefrontal-limbic circuits. Despite differences in timing and depth, she notes that all depend on shared neural architecture.

Why Some People Cringe or Tingle While Others Don’t

Explaining why some people physically cringe or feel tingling when watching someone else being touched, Dr Chandhok says that mirror-touch systems vary in sensitivity. Some people have more active circuits or stronger emotional sensitivity, while others naturally filter out such sensory information. Personality, past experiences, and emotional attunement all shape these reactions.

Dwivedi adds that differences in sensorimotor resonance, baseline empathy levels, interoceptive awareness, and life experiences — such as caregiving or trauma — can influence how intensely someone responds to observed touch. She emphasises that these responses lie on a continuum and are all part of normal human variation.

The latest study reveals a truth about human connection: the brain is never a passive witness. It mirrors, anticipates and emotionally registers the experiences of others even before conscious awareness takes hold. Through rapid neural signatures and shared affective pathways, the act of simply watching another person being touched becomes a bridge between bodies and minds.

Stay Ahead, Read Faster

Scan the QR code to download the News18 app and enjoy a seamless news experience anytime, anywhere.

login