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Why can not you tickle yourself?
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Question Date: 2006-02-02 | | Answer 1:
Ticklishness is in your head. That is, the
sensation happens when you are not expecting to be
touched, or when someone's touch is unpredictable.
The first part (reacting strongly when something
touches you lightly and you're not expecting it)
is a response we've adapted to protect ourselves
against creepy crawlies, or even predators. Think
of the fear you have when you're hiking and
something brushes the back of your neck. That
could be a snake on a tree branch ready to strike,
or a poisonous spider that just crawled down your
shirt. Think also of the fear you have when
someone taps your shoulder unexpectedly. That
person behind you, whom you didn't know was there,
could have been a mountain lion stalking you,
ready to strike. The sensation of a light touch or
a surprising touch is slightly fearful and that
fear causes us to laugh (believe it or not). The
second part (reacting strongly when someone
touches you in a sensitive spot even though you
know they are going to touch you) is also due to
fear: fear of the unexpected. Sensitive spots are
often vulnerable spots: the belly, which houses
some important organs; the feet and the knees,
which we need to run away from predators; the
neck, which is so easily damaged and houses our
arteries; or our armpits, which also house
important arteries. Usually when someone tickles
you they are a friend, and you know they're not
going to harm you. But their touch is
unpredictable, and just the smallest bit of fear
that they could harm you makes you react strongly
to their touch. So it makes sense that you can't
tickle yourself, since you know where you are
going to touch yourself, when you'll do it and
exactly what you'll do next. Your brain
anticipates the touch and there's no surprise and
no fear. I am so ticklish that I CAN tickle myself
if the touch is light enough and on a sensitive
spot (underarms, feet). And I can't stand anyone
touching my feet. Valerie Franck | | Answer 2:
That's a great question.If we laugh when someone
else tickles us, it seems to make sense that we
could tickle ourselves, but I've never known
anyone who could. I found an interesting
explanation at this site: how
stuff works
Basically, there are three
important things going on: 1. Our bodies
filter out unimportant information. Your body
constantly gets messages about things touching
you. Your clothes touch you, your feet may touch
the floor or your body touches a chair. Your
brain ignores this information most of the time so
that you can concentrate on important things.
Bugs crawling on you have a very light
touch, so normally they might not get much
reaction from our brains. It might be very
important to know that there's a bug on you, so
maybe that's why we evolved a tickling sensation
that we really pay attention to. If someone
tickles you, you try to escape or get rid of it.
Maybe the tickling response makes us try to get
rid of spiders, ticks, or insects that might be
dangerous.
2. Our brains pay more
attention to surprising things. If you are
reading or watching TV and scratch your nose, you
probably won't even remember doing it. But if
your friend scratched your nose, you'd be
surprised and remember that.
When you
tickle yourself, there's no surprise. Your brain
knows you're going to try tickle yourself because
it gives the orders to your hand. So it doesn't
pay much attention. If you touch the soles of
your feet, You feel yourself touching your feet,
but there's no tickling sensation.
There's an interesting experiment that
showed how important surprise is. If people use a
robot to tickle themselves, they do laugh. The
important difference is that there's a very small
pause between the person starting the robot and
the robot starting the tickling, so even though
they are expecting to be tickled, their brain is
fooled because the touch doesn't happen when the
signal to move the hand is sent out.
3. We
sometimes laugh when we are scared or
uncomfortable. According to the site I looked
at, laughing is a response to a person being
scared or uncomfortable about being tickled. If
your brain knows that you're the one doing the
tickling, there's no fear involved, so you don't
"feel tickled." I don't know why some kinds of
fear make us laugh and some don't, or why some
spots are more ticklish than others.
If
tickling is really part of a bug-avoidance system,
we would expect other animals to be ticklish. Do
you think they are?Thanks for asking, | | Answer 3:
I think that tickling, as it is usually practiced,
has two components. There is the reaction to the
actual touch sensation from body parts that are
not usually touched in a certain way. There, I
think the observation is actually wrong: One can
in fact tickle oneself. Feathering the sole of my
foot myself gets me to the verge of laughing. But
there is a much larger behavioral and
psychological component to it. Besides the
physical aspect of it, it is a form of
interpersonal or social interaction. (It would be
interesting to know whether other primates tickle
each other.) As a social species, we are probably
hardwired to enjoy this kind of interaction.
Without a partner, it obviously won't work. Click Here to return to the search form.
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