afferent

Fairhurst, for instance, wears more perfume and spends longer washing her hair – “a direct activation” of her C-tactile afferent nerves, she thinks.

“The C-tactile afferent is the Higgs boson of the social brain. It’s the missing particle that socializes the developing brain. It brings everything else together,” he says.

It’s so awkward to act blasé about being naked around other people — people who are also, themselves, naked — that there’s nothing left to do but submit en masse to the social and afferent novelty.

That’s thanks to sophisticated processing of sensory data: first, so-called afferent nerves transmit information from sensors in our fingertips to the spinal cord.

In July, it acquired biotech Afferent Pharmaceuticals for about $500 million.