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Supportive touch has remarkable benefits in childbirth and during painful medical procedures. But does social touch influence pain neurophysiology, ie, the brain processes linked to nociception and primary pain experience? What other brain processes beyond primary pain systems mediate their analgesic effects? In this study, women (N= 30) experienced thermal pain while holding their romantic partner's hand or an inert device. Social touch reduced pain and attenuated functional magnetic resonance imaging activity in the Neurologic Pain Signature (NPS)—a multivariate brain pattern sensitive and specific to somatic pain—and increased connectivity between the NPS and both somatosensory and “default mode” regions. Brain correlates of touch-induced analgesia included reduced pain-related activation in (1) regions targeted by primary nociceptive afferents (eg, posterior insula, and anterior cingulate cortex …