The touch and caress are basic needs of human beings. "It is through the skin," writes Ashley Montagu "That we become beings able to love"

Typically, when you think to the primary needs of human beings, we forget that one of the main needs since the first days of life, is the contact. The r esearch on the formation of intra-uterine life in the period makes us to understand how the emotional need of contact is a basic need of human beings since the early days of the foetus.

The nervous system and the integument (skin and skin appendages) are formed by the same germ layers: the ectoderm. This common origin means that between the two systems there is a close relationship and that the fetus presents a huge sensitivity to tactile stimulation. "Even at eight weeks of life," reports the anthropologist english essayist Ashley Montagu "an embryo just three centimeters long, if stimulated with a blunt tip on the upper lip or on the wings of the nose is able to respond arching neck and trunk to escape the source of stimulation. This demonstrates that the sense most closely associated with skin, touch is the "first form" at embryonic first bridge linking the new being and the outside world. 
According to the principles of embryology a vital function is particularly important in  early spread. As the organ of the skin and the sense of touch are the first to form in the embryo you can understand how, even in terms of neurophysiology, the function of contact is a primary need of man.