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STUNNING IMAGES SHOW THE POWER OF TOUCH

Saturday, May 21, 2022

In today’s newsletter, we document medical miracles in restoring human touch, photograph one of the deepest caves on Earth, cover widespread outrage over the deaths of hundreds of beagles at a breeding facility … and see how Viking treasure was hidden for centuries.

PHOTOGRAPHS AND VIDEO BY LYNN JOHNSON

Photographer Lynn Johnson had a challenge: How do you illustrate a major feature showing the increasing importance scientists are placing on touch—that sense reinforces our humanity, and keeps us healthy?

She “went on a mission,” she told our colleague David Brindley, “to try to look for situations, for people, for whom touch is a critical part of their lives—their survival, their orientation in life.”

The longtime Nat Geo photographer and Explorer traveled to an experimental school in Italy and several labs to show the changes in thinking about the power of touch. She also spent time with research participants in Ohio and in Chicago. (Pictured above is Scott Imbrie, who has brain implants that help with scrambled tactile perception.) As the science has improved, Johnson has seen amazing results.

Read the full story here—and scroll down for a few of her images.

Feeling better: Nerve fibers called CT afferents, clustered in the arms and back, can make people feel pleasant—and warmly connected to others—when those areas are brushed or stroked. University of Virginia neuroscientists, exploring possible links between unusual CT response and autism or other developmental differences, are recording the brain activity of typically developing babies such as nine-month-old Ian Boardman.

Sometimes it hurts: Arizona chiropractor John Ball treats world-class athletes—his grimacing patient on the massage table is American middle-distance runner Ben Blankenship—with powerful hands that manipulate while simultaneously picking up cues about muscle and bone. “I know how to use tissue and tactile feedback from the person’s body,” Ball says. “The more tactile sense, the more skin receptors you can stimulate, the more information you’re bouncing back and forth between the local environment and the brain.”

Pointing again! After a malignancy in 2018 forced retired teacher Neil Oldham to have his right lower arm and hand amputated, he joined the University of Michigan’s touch-restoration research—which meant new surgery to implant electrodes. With research fellow Philip Vu looking on, Oldham uses his own nerves and muscles—plus signals from implanted electrodes—to move the thumb and fingers of a prosthetic hand. “I hope that somehow, because I’m allowed to participate in this, that might make it better for somebody in the future,” he says.

‘Really all that we have’: After documenting the power of human touch for so long, Lynn Johnson hopes her photographs inspire readers to hug someone. “Human connection,” she says, “is really all that we have.” Pictured above, hospice nurse Janine Hurn, in personal protection equipment, was doing her best for Elvy Kaik in the patient‘s final days of life in April 2020. Occasionally, Hurn would briefly slip off her glove near the end of a visit for the balm of touch, knowing she could quickly use hand sanitizer afterward. “We both needed it—to just have that warm human hand.”

Here’s the entire story.

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STORIES WE'RE FOLLOWING

PHOTOGRAPH BY KASIA BIERNACKA

Descending into one of the deepest caves on Earth (pictured above, a subterranean passage)

She navigated 3,000 miles across the Pacific without maps or technology

Outrage follows deaths of hundreds of beagles at Virginia breeding facility

These 6 national parks tell extraordinary tales of the American South

Incredible visuals of a ’monster fish‘ in the Mekong

See: How an earthen mound hid the grandest of Viking burial sites

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

PHOTOGRAPH BY DANIELA RIVERA ANTARA

Pieces of home: How do you show the movement of people away from a troubled homeland in a different way? Photographer Daniela Rivera Antara chose to focus on the safe spaces Venezuelan women found in Peru, such as communities and homes they have built in an often-inhospitable land. (Pictured above, Adriana Sierra relaxes with her son, Mateo, who is feeding her a cracker.)

IN A FEW WORDS

QUOTE

Through a photograph, I could transform a statistic into a person.

Shahidul Alam

Photojournalist known for his work in Bangladesh; Nat Geo Explorer at Large

PHOTO OF THE DAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL YAMASHITA, @YAMASHITAPHOTO

This weekend in Tokyo: It’s Sanja Matsuri (Three Shrine) time. On hiatus since 2019, the festival traditionally has been one of Tokyo’s most popular. Above, in this pre-COVID image recently posted on our Instagram page, people jam the grounds of Sensoji Temple, surrounding the mikoshi (portable shrines) and seeking good luck and prosperity. Here’s a look at celebrants representing demons, deities, and spirits in Japanese festivals.

LAST GLIMPSE

PHOTOGRAPH BY DOROTHY HOSMER

Restive even then: Nat Geo’s description in 1939 of this photo described a cyclist’s journey in Poland as heading “toward Ukraine’s restive borderland”—83 years before the latest war in Ukraine. Writer and photographer Dorothy Hosmer was a free spirit, quitting her New York banking job to board a steamship to Europe, where she zigzagged by bicycle across the continent. She did three stories for the magazine, says Sara Manco, senior photo archivist for the National Geographic Society. Here’s a collection of Nat Geo photography through the eyes of women.

SEE VINTAGE PHOTOS

This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard, Jen Tse, and Monica Williams. Amanda Williams-Bryant, Rita Spinks, Jeremy Brandt-Vorel, and Hobbs Bell also contributed this week. Have an idea or a link? We’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. Thanks for reading!

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