How social information influences cortical processing is unclear. Here, the authors took whole-cell recordings from neurons in the barrel cortex of awake, head-restrained rats that were whisking freely or nose-to-nose with another rat. Compared with free whisking, 'social' whisking induced depolarization and larger, more-frequent fluctuations in membrane potential in barrel cortical neurons. Moreover, oscillations in membrane potential were locked to the motion of the rat's own whiskers, and these effects even occurred briefly before social contact. Thus, active social touch may evoke different cortical responses to those evoked by non-social stimuli.