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Why you can’t tickle yourself
- guywithahat 4y agohttps://archive.ph/kQeFc https://archive.ph/kQeFc
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tandyman 4y agoOhhh I'm sure some are up to the challenge.
- OisinMoran 4y agoInteresting article, but I can 100% tickle my own feet. I don't understand why the fact of not being able to tickle yourself is repeated so often without being questioned.
- saalweachter 4y agoDo you laugh when you do so?
- narag 4y agoI don't, even when it's other person. Actually it's a very annoying sensation, even infuriating. I don't recommend tickling me unless you want to be punched in the face.
- capableweb 4y agoI'm able to sometimes but not always. Some research have been done on the subject, with various conclusions. One I remember reading about some time ago: "Individuals with pronounced schizotypal traits are particularly successful in tickling themselves" - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810016300174 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10538...
- drooby 4y agoIt has been noticed that those with schizophrenia (not saying you have that) are able to tickle themselves. The hypothesis is that people with schizophrenia are less able to predict their internal sensations - and because tickling is so tightly coupled exciting our brains expectation and predictions - they experience it as if someone else is doing it.
- not_alexb 4y agoMy partner of a few years can do it and she couldn't be further from the representations in the literature or media (Sapolsky's lecture on it) that I've seen on schizophrenia; however, I'm not even remotely an expert in any of it.
- headhasthoughts 4y agoASD and schizophrenia share something in common: Both feature NMDA receptors functioning differently than in neurotypicals, which is a plausible cause for why some people are able to tickle themselves. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3808979/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3808979/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17097347/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17097347/ People with either are less likely to experience illusions. SlateStarCodex had a decent article that touched on the phenomenon a few years ago: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/28/why-are-transgender-people-immune-to-optical-illusions/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/28/why-are-transgender-pe...
- LinuxBender 4y agoI used to be able to tickle my own feet a little bit when my skin was drier, but I can't any more. I don't have any of the symptoms in that NIH doc. Unsure if related but I also receive no effects from morphine regardless of dosage. Nobody has been able to tell me why.
- DemeterFarm 4y ago
- Waterluvian 4y agoI can only tickle myself when high on about 5-10mg of THC. Any other time and it simply doesn’t work.
- throwaway202022 4y agoI can tickle myself anywhere, especially on my back. It feels no different than if someone else were doing it.
- tsimionescu 4y agoDoes it cause you to laugh and frantically try to move away from the tickling? My understanding is that that is what most people don't experience when they try to tickle themselves.
- throwaway202022 4y agoNot laugh, but I do recoil/jerk away.
- eyelidlessness 4y agoI can tickle myself too and do it frequently. It always surprises me though. I can’t tickle myself intentionally. I can come very close! I can get the physical sensation, but not the tickle reaction that’s involuntary.
- tsimionescu 4y agoI am very curious - when you say that, do you mean that you get that same sensation on your skin as when someone else is tickling you, possibly with a need to scratch afterwards, or do you get the full laughing and avoidance response?
- eyelidlessness 4y agoI get the skin surface sensation like I’ve brushed against something soft and delicate that isn’t my own intention, but it is my own body so I realize what’s happening processing the same moment. I don’t have a laugh response or the kind of abandon I remember in childhood being tickled. It’s like a shiver or goosebumps and a mental giggle when I realize what I did to me.
- Izkata 4y agoThe laugh response is what the aricle/researchers and everyone else means when they say "you can't tickle yourself", I'm pretty sure most people don't realize this and are, like you, referring to just the skin sensation. > As planned, Subject 1 couldn’t help but laugh. The fact that they couldn’t help it is what has drawn Michael Brecht, leader of the research group from Humboldt University, to the neuroscience of tickling and play. It’s funny, but it’s also deeply mysterious—and understudied. People tend to come up with a variety of words to describe just the skin sensation when challenged on this (just scroll through other responses in this thread now that they've started responding), and "tickle" just seems to be a fallback when they don't think about it.
- Semaphor 4y agoThe same for me. I have extremely ticklish feet (just as passing touch is enough), and while it’s not as bad when I tickle myself, I certainly can do it.
- tsimionescu 4y agoDo you get the laughing reaction and almost involuntary spasms to retract your feet, or just the unpleasant ticklish sensation on the skin?
- Semaphor 4y agoI don’t usually get a laughing reaction at all from tickling, it’s more shocked gasping, but yes to the involuntary spasm and retraction.
- causality0 4y agoI'm not sure I've actually met anyone who can't tickle themselves.
- thetoon 4y agoI somehow remember a thing about tickling being actually two mechanisms, biologically speaking. One is the light, very superficial tickling which only makes you smile, the other is the more intense kind which is able to induce full-on laughter. And they've both have very different evolutionnary hypothesis as to why they exist in modern humans. AFAIK, the light kind can be self-inflicted. The other can't.
- polishdude20 4y agoI wonder if you're more likely to tickle your feet because your feet are are the main part of your body that gets a strong touch from an external object consistently when walking. Maybe the same mechanism discussed sort of turns off or is muted for feet because of this?
- tgv 4y agoBecause this is basically bullshit. The title calls it neuroscience, but they're studying classical stimulus-response, just like Wundt. Then they come up with a theory that needlessly incorporates some neuro-stuff, which then is pronounced fact. If they would have done it properly, they would have noticed that you can tickle yourself. I'm pretty ticklish, and like you, I can also tickle myself under my own feet.
- vasco 4y agoI can tickle my feet and I can tickle the ceiling of my mouth with my tongue. It's hard to explain but if you very slowly and gently drag the tongue through the ceiling of the mouth at least for me it triggers the tickling response the most consistent and reliable way. Article is complete bullshit.
- raydiatian 4y agoWired magazine, back again with hard hitting journalism.
- bitwize 4y agoThe crown of my head is VERY ticklish. Not by hands, but one time I got my hair shampooed professionally and I was so tickled by the water on my head that the roof of my mouth tingled.
- emmanueloga_ 4y agoAnswer: "The leading theory holds that tickling provokes laughter thanks to a prediction error by the brain. An unpredictable touch confuses it, sending it into a mini frenzy. Self-touch is always predictable … so, no frenzy. But Brecht thinks it’s not really about prediction. Instead, he suggests that as a person touches themselves, the brain sends out a body-wide message that inhibits touch sensitivity. “We think what is happening is the brain has a trick to know: As soon as you touch yourself, don’t listen,” he says. If it didn’t, he argues, we’d all be constantly tickling ourselves every time we scratched an armpit or touched our toes." -- The question was mildly interesting but I'm pretty grumpy about reading long, long, loooong articles that are supposed to answer N questions, where the answers are buried deep in some random location/s... :-p I guess this one is just around 4/5 pages or so, but the answer fits in just two paragraphs.
- raldi 4y agoThis is the best kind of comment.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- akrakesh 4y agoNow imagine if all such fluffy articles posted on HN have such a gist; how much time and sanity it could save. https://hngists.com https://hngists.com is my 15-year-old nephew's attempt to do it. It would be great if you could post your comment there.
- Andrex 4y agoI'm sure this is useful to some, but I come to HN more for longer-form articles these days. This change might have originated when I ditched programming as a career, or merely growing older. Dunno. Language is so disposable these days (much of my received text messages are about 50% emoji now), I really respect someone who takes the time and effort to ply an interesting tome out of English.
- Arnavion 4y ago
- collegeburner 4y agono, i can actually tickle myself. in most of the same ticklish spots on my torso as others, not just my feet. no idea why ig i'm just weird lmaoo
- bismuthcrystal 4y agoDo you burst in laughter from your own tickling?
- dev_tty01 4y agoDoes anyone burst out in laughter when they are tickled?
- mickdeek86 4y agoMost children and many adults do, though this may be more a socially learned reaction than an autonomous one.
- Kiboneu 4y ago“But Brecht thinks it’s not really about prediction. Instead, he suggests that as a person touches themselves, the brain sends out a body-wide message that inhibits touch sensitivity.” That’s not predictive machinery at play?
- dilawar 4y agoProbably closer to habituation than prediction. Havnt read the full article only the comment at the top that summarizes the article.
- crotho 4y ago
- xtracto 4y agoThis article made me wonder... it has been shown that tinnitus has some remote relation with epilepsy and Parkinson. (It is theorized that tinnitus is the result of some uncontrolled firing of neurons in a specific region of the brain). On the other hand, some good tinnitus results have been shown from "over stimulating" brain signals, including the thing where you snap the back of your head with your index finger. So, could laughter/ ticking help in some way CS tinnitus? I'll try as soon as I'm with my wife. What if I get tickling for some long timeframe, could it have any effect on my tinnitus?
- anarchogeek 4y agoThat's weird, I can tickle myself but am not at all ticklish when anybody else does it. This has always proved to be a kind of superpower when in a tickle fight. I've never looked into why.
- User23 4y agoYou sure can tickle yourself. I've had an itch on the bottom of my foot that I can't scratch because it's unbearably ticklish.
- robocat 4y agoMost people (in my experience) can tickle themselves by touching the roof of their mouth - puts a spanner into some self-tickling theories. > Feet rank the [most ticklish]. No way. The palate (roof of mouth) is just insanely ticklish. Be careful if doing it to a friend, because a reaction can be to bite. I would be pretty sure there are other places more ticklish than feet, but it is hard to do random sampling.
- silisili 4y agoThis comment chain seems to be people with differing definitions of tickling. To most, tickling is a semi awful experience of uncontrollable laughter and pulling away from the source. To half the commenters here, it's just a funny feeling they can do to themselves. That honestly made me wonder if some people were never tickled as a child. Which I can't say is a weird thing, either.
- sva_ 4y agoI used to laugh from being tickled as a child, but I've trained myself not to react with laughter, as the lack of laughter seems to make people disinterested in tickling you.
- cuteboy19 4y agoWe can easily see the difference. Try doing it with your fingers vs using a feather. They are two very different sensations.
- Izkata 4y ago> That honestly made me wonder if some people were never tickled as a child. Which I can't say is a weird thing, either. Aside from it never being attempted, I can confirm that some people can't be tickled. Two of my childhood friends were like this.
- ForOldHack 4y agoAbsolute bullsh*.
- theodric 4y agoYou can, in fact, tickle yourself. Or at least I can tickle my feet with my fingernails or a feather or whatever and induce an involuntary jerking away from the source of the tickling. Perhaps I'm a unique specimen (my mother will be delighted that she was right all along).
- keepquestioning 4y agoThis seems a lie. I can certainly induce frisson on myself.
- temptemptemp111 4y ago
- bearmode 4y agoI absolutely can tickle myself. I struggle to scratch itchy spots on my feet because they're just too ticklish.
- booleandilemma 4y agoI've observed that no matter what a study says, there will be people on HN contradicting it, no matter how ridiculous. Humans can't tickle themselves? I can. Humans think in pictures? I don't. Humans don't remember the moment of their birth? I do. (Followed, of course, by "I thought this was normal"). Do people lie out of defiance, or to make themselves sound like special snowflakes, or what? Is there a term for this?
- fauigerzigerk 4y agoI think it's simply that people for whom the findings are not true are far more likely to comment. There are always exceptions to the rule in empirical studies and there's no better way to find them than making a general claim in a public forum. It would be far more surprising if someone claimed the halting problem wasn't true for them (which someone did in fact claim on upwork or somesuch :)
- Handytinge 4y agoYour viewpoint is that because peoples experience don't match your own + the studies results, it must be a lie? I hope my interpretation's wrong here, that's a very closed-minded and sad way to live.
- ballenf 4y agoThe suppression of sensation or reaction to one's own touch is what pickpockets depend on. They basically trick you into ignoring a touch sensation because you think you're doing it to yourself. Next thing you (don't) know, your watch or wallet is gone.
- solfox 4y agoMy own theory (that may be shared but I don’t see posted here) is that tickling is a beneficial trait that evolved through evolution. Tickling is a form of “play fighting”, except it is done with parents and sometimes friends. It is sometimes uncomfortable for the tickled but they giggle anyway - which encourages the tickler to keep going with the “attack”. If the ticked person had the “appropriate” response of pain, the attack would stop. The tickled thus learns reflexes to defend against attacks in general, especially against an unfriendly human. I’d imagine that the ticklish trait evolved and imparted that population an advantage against populations that were not ticklish.
- jrootabega 4y agoAnother phenomenon that I think is related - if you think you're alone, you can't prepare yourself to not be surprised if someone comes around a corner. You can tell yourself to pretend there is someone there, and logically it makes perfect sense that if someone really is there, it won't be a surprise. But you will always be startled if they are there. And to take it further - mirrors and shadows. If, out of the corner of your eye, you see yourself moving in a reflection or shadow, you can scare the shit out of yourself. Full-on primal fight or flight. But you can never do it deliberately. And I doubt you can do it more than once every few hours.