Have you ever wondered why parents instinctively cuddle a child who has fallen over or offer to kiss a bruise better?
Scientists have suggested that a soothing touch can ease away pain.
Scientists at the Liverpool University discovered that gentle stroking activates "pleasure" nerves beneath the skin, which then reduce the sensation of pain from other nerves.
The nerves respond to being brushed slowly and they appear to be sensitive to the type of stroking and cuddling provided by a mother to a hurt child, scientists said.
Professor Francis McGlone, a neuroscientist at the university who worked with a team of researchers in Sweden, found that a painful stimulus applied to the skin can be eased significantly by gently stroking the pleasure nerves in a nearby part of the body.
"If you get a piece of grit in your eye, have a toothache, or bite your tongue, it hurts so much because there are more C fibres there. The research we have been doing is building evidence for another role of C fibres in the skin that are not pain receptors, but are pleasure receptors," Professor McGlone told the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Liverpool University.
"There is another sensory nerve fibre system in human skin that appears to code for the pleasant and affiliative aspects of touch we are all familiar with, such as when grooming or being cuddled," he was quoted as saying by The Independent newspaper on Thursday.
The nerves are part of the so-called C fibres of the nervous system, which are known to be responsible for producing the sensation of pain in the skin. But instead of stimulating pain, a subset of the fibres also appear to stimulate pleasure.
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