It used to be the case that if you wanted to reach out and touch someone, you had to use your hands. But thanks to scientists in the U.K., you might some day be able to use technology--and no, we're not talking the telephone--to transmit the emotions you experience to someone else via touch.

A study conducted by Dr. Marianna Obrist at the University of Sussex has established that touches to certain parts of the hand tend to be interpreted as specific emotions. For example, contact to the outer part of the hand is generally seen as negative; unhappy emotions are triggered by touches to the area around the pinky, while tactile sensations in the index figure are more positive. (Obrist's study did not, however, show a physiological reaction from the touches.)

Obrist used a system to test the emotional impact of the study's participants called Ultrahaptics, which uses directed bursts of air to trigger those emotions via haptic--or touch-based--feedback. Though the UltraHaptics device is bulky and sits on a desk, the researchers envision a day when the same end result could be accomplished by a bracelet worn on one's wrist.