To beat pain & stress, just hold hands

'With Spouse Hand-Holding, You Also Stop Looking For Other Signs Of Danger And Feel More Secure'

On a brisk autumn afternoon, in the shadow of the marble arch in Washington Square Park, a couple visiting from Ohio walked along holding hands like two teenagers going steady, decades after "going steady" went out of vogue. When a stranger asked why they had chosen to join hands during their stroll, the man, Dave Findlay, looked at his wife of seven years and answered in a word: "Connection."

Or as the Beatles sang back in 1963: "When I'll feel that something, I want to hold your hand." Those simple lyrics turned an expression of teenage longing and first romantic steps into a No.1 hit.

Yet today, when Justin Timberlake is at the top of the charts with 'SexyBack' and the digital airwaves are filled with steamy lyrical declarations ("I'm into havin' sex, I ain't into makin' love" sang 50 Cent in 'In da Club'), couples like Dave and Carey Findlay still intertwine fingers, kiss palms and link pinkies as they meander through parks, cross streets and snake through crowds.

"Hand-holding is the one aspect that's not been affected by the sexual revolution," said Dalton Conley, a professor and chairman of the department of sociology at New York University.

"It's less about sex than about a public demonstration about coupledom."

"Based on what we've seen, when we get more physical intimacy we get better relationships, whether a mother and an infant or a couple," said Tiffany Field, the director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine.

James Coan, an assistant professor of psychology and the neuroscience graduate program at the University of Virginia, has studied the impact of human touch, particularly how it affects the neural response to threatening situations, and said the results of a recent study were more dramatic than he expected.

"We found that holding the hand of really anyone, it made your brain work a little less hard in coping," Dr Coan said, adding that any sort of hand-holding relaxes the body.

The study, which will be published this year in the journal Psychological Science, involved 16 couples who were rated happily married based on the answers in a detailed questionnaire. The wives were put inside an MRI machine and were told they were to receive mild electric shocks to an ankle. Brain images showed that regions of the women's brains that had been activated in anticipation of pain and that were associated with negative emotions decreased when their husbands reached into the machine.

"With spouse hand-holding, you also stop looking for other signs of danger and you start feeling more secure," said Dr Coan, who led the study.

"If you're in a really strong relationship, you may be protected against pain and stress hormones that may have a damaging effect on your immune system." Perhaps it is why so many people crave it.