Table of contents:
- Causes the body to feel ticklish when touched or tickled
- But why don't you tickle yourself when you tickle yourself?
- So, is it normal to feel amused when you just touch it?
Have you ever accidentally touched a certain body part of a person and they felt unusual tingling? Why do some people feel ticklish when touched just a little, but there are also those who can stand being tickled?
Causes the body to feel ticklish when touched or tickled
Some people get tingly excessively when they touch their body parts, even if it's not on purpose to make them feel tickled. To reveal this, neuroscientist David J. Linden, who is also a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, explains, basically tingling is the first line of defense against attack.
He gave an example that on the soles of the feet, everyone tends to feel tingling when touched. However, in other parts of the skin, the tingling feeling that occurs when you touch it is a reflex of your body's mechanism to fight attacks triggered by insects or other animals that may gnaw your body.
Itching and tingling are similar effects that call for an immediate physical response. You can take this as a clue to prevent further attacks. However, this does not apply if the attack comes from yourself. He gave an example, when your hands touch a part of the body that is prone to tingling, there is no tingling feeling that arises.
It's different if other people or animals do it to you. Reflexively the brain will regulate to cause a tingling sensation. Meanwhile, in those who are elderly, Linden said the tingling sensation will decrease. He also said that with each age, a person loses about one percent of the nerve endings of the skin that play a role in regulating tingling. But the loss of nerve endings doesn't completely cause the tingling to decrease.
But why don't you tickle yourself when you tickle yourself?
The answer lies in an area of the brain called the cerebellum, or cerebellum, which is involved in monitoring movement. Studies carried out by a research team at University College London show that the cerebellum can predict the sensations your own movements produce, but not if they are performed by someone else.
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, one of the researchers involved in the study revealed that when you try to tickle yourself, the cerebellum predicts the sensation that will be generated, and that prediction is used to cancel the response from other brain regions.
He explained that there are two areas of the brain that are involved in processing feelings when you are tickled, namely the somatosensory cortex which processes touch and the anterior cingulate cortex which processes pleasant information (feeling of comfort). These two areas are less active when a person tickles themselves, than when someone else tickles them.
Further studies have found that you can tickle yourself and feel the normal sensation of being tickled by another person with the help of a remote controlled robot. When you press a button on the remote, the robot will pause for a split second before tickling your body. The longer the delay, the more amused it will taste.
So, is it normal to feel amused when you just touch it?
There are some people who have a higher level of sensitivity than other people so that it can make them feel amused when they are just touched. Meanwhile, there are also people who have a low level of sensitivity so that when they are touched or tickled, they just feel uncomfortable.
What's interesting is, amusement can be divided into two types. The first is knismesis or a tingling feeling that tends to be mild like a feather touched the skin. Usually, this amusement you can do to yourself. Meanwhile, another tingling feeling is gargalesis which tends to be more aggressive where when a sensitive part of the body is tickled, you can laugh out loud until you run out of breath.
Health experts say that when the nerve endings under the skin are stimulated by touch, the cortex will immediately analyze the touch and send it to the two parts of the brain that will signal to laugh and feel good. So, if you are one of those people who feel ticklish when touched, don't worry, this is normal.
