09/12/2025
How Horses Experience Touch: The Three Neurobiological Pathways That Shape Their Response
In 2016, cognitive neuroscientist Dan-Mikael Ellingsen and colleagues outlined three major ways mammals experience touch.
These same mechanisms apply directly to horses — and they explain why touch can regulate, soothe, sensitize, or even overwhelm them depending on the situation.
Horses, like humans, process touch through attention, prediction, and context.
These factors determine whether touch feels safe, regulating, threatening, or simply ignored.
Here’s how each pathway shows up in horses:
1. Gate of Attention: What the Horse’s Nervous System Notices
The “gate of attention” refers to how the nervous system chooses what sensory input to focus on and what to tune out.
Horses constantly filter countless sensations — tack pressure, footfall vibrations, air movement, insects, your leg, their own breathing.
Because they filter so much, they may not show awareness of a restricted or sore area until your touch draws attention to it.
Equine examples:
• A horse doesn’t react to a tight region in the back until you palpate it, and suddenly they flinch, brace, or soften.
• A horse grazes comfortably despite a mild injury, but reacts strongly when you groom or touch the area.
• Under saddle, they may tune out subtle discomfort until a specific movement shifts attention to it.
Your touch often opens the gate to an area their nervous system had been suppressing or ignoring.
2. Prediction: What the Horse Expects Touch to Feel Like
Before touch even happens, the horse’s brain predicts:
• what it will feel like
• whether it will be comfortable or threatening
• whether it usually precedes pressure, pain, relief, or relaxation
These predictions are shaped by prior experience.
Equine examples:
• A horse who associates grooming with discomfort may brace before your hand even lands.
• A horse who has learned that soft, slow contact leads to relaxation will exhale and drop their head as soon as you start.
• One who finds myofascial-style touch relieving may tilt, lean, and “seek” more pressure.
• Horses previously handled with force often anticipate discomfort, and their body prepares for it.
Prediction is why two horses can respond completely differently to the same type of touch.
3. Context: The Environment, the Relationship, and the Internal State
Context determines how the horse interprets your touch.
The same physical stimulus can feel safe, neutral, irritating, or threatening depending on:
• who is touching them
• how regulated the horse is at the moment
• the environment (quiet arena vs. busy showgrounds)
• the emotional history they have with that person
• whether the touch feels expected or unexpected
Context alters touch at the level of the nervous system.
Equine examples:
• A massage therapist or trusted handler can touch areas the horse would not allow from strangers.
• A horse at a show may find normal grooming irritating because the nervous system is already elevated.
• A horse who enjoys tactile contact at rest may resist when anxious, in pain, or overstimulated.
• After injury or inflammation, even gentle touch can feel sharp or threatening — a hedonic flip, where pleasant touch becomes aversive.
This flip is adaptive. It motivates the horse to protect the injured area.
The Hedonic Flip in Horses
Just like humans, horses have C-tactile afferents — the slow, emotional-touch fibers.
When functioning normally, these fibers respond to:
• soft grooming
• slow touch
• rhythmic strokes
These signals promote safety, bonding, and social connection.
But when tissue is injured, inflamed, or when the nervous system is hypervigilant, these same fibers can flip their interpretation from soothing → threatening.
This explains:
• sudden skin hypersensitivity
• irritation with grooming
• defensive reactions to normally tolerated touch
• sensitivity during certain phases of healing
The horse isn’t “grumpy.”
Their nervous system has changed the meaning of the input.
Why This Matters for Horse Handling & Bodywork
Touch is not just physical — it is deeply contextual, neurobiological, and state-dependent.
A horse’s response to touch depends on:
• what they are aware of
• what they expect
• how safe they feel
• their past experiences
• their internal physiological state
Understanding these three pathways allows you to:
• interpret responses accurately
• adapt pressure and pace
• avoid overstimulation
• create a safer interaction
• support regulation of the nervous system
• facilitate healing and movement reorganization
Touch becomes not just a technique, but a conversation with the horse’s brain and body.
https://koperequine.com/from-poll-to-sacrum-the-dural-sleeve-and-dural-fascial-kinetic-chain/
