While the discovery of these afferents has been an exciting development in our understanding of affective perceptual experience, they also raise many questions. How can a receptor “code for pleasantness”? Are there other similar receptors for pleasant touch in glabrous skin (the smooth, hairless skin of the lips and palms where they are no CT–afferents). What do these receptors mean for our understanding of pleasure and pain and affective experience more generally? And returning to where we started, we can seriously wonder whether and to what extent the CT system seems to be a part of touch. The CT system seems, unlike that for cutaneous pain, to be a genuine component of the touch system; on the other hand, the CT system also doesn’t appear to have any direct discriminative function. CT interactions reveal much about the complex ways in which emotions and motivation can come to be closely connected to perceptual experience. They can also be seen as a bridge to a better understanding of affiliative touch, the close form of caring touch that forms an essential element of social bonding and human development, especially of the immune system (Field 2003). This should prove to be an area of increasing research.