How come we can't tickle ourselves? How come when I was a youngster and I'd try to get tickle revenge on an older person, they just stare at me w/ barely a chuckle?
well it seems I'm not the only person asking these thought provoking questions because a quick Google search led me to over 4.5 million results.
Tickle Torture is what I remember calling it when I was younger, losing control of your thoughts, body movements and funny bone. If done for a period of time, it can be absolute torture. I wonder if Governments use this technique to extract information from hostages, it would certainly get better press than the Waterboarding technique used as recently as 2007 at Guantanamo Bay on terror suspects by the United States CIA. They could've just used a giant red, white & blue Peacock feather and said "Coochi Coo".
Researchers at University College London found that the cerebellum detects self-inflicted touch ahead of time and tells the rest of the brain to ignore the resulting sensation, spoiling the fun of self-tickling. cbcnews/health
They discovered this by hooking volunteers up to a Robotic tickle machine where the volunteers could request tickle treatments by pressing a button. Scientists began adjusting the delay between the push of the button and the robotic response and found that, the longer the delay, the more successful a belly full of laughter would result.
....basically, if people can anticipate or control the sensation, there is nothing to get giddy about. It's the element of surprise and lack of control that sends us into hysterics, a defense mechanism we were all born with to detect foreign creatures or objects crawling over our bodies.
Who knew there was so much science involved w/ the act of tickling however, one couldn't tell by searching the internet fantastic, my gawd.....any which way you type the word tickle, you are bound to get screen shots of bondage queens tying someone down to a wooden table in a black rubber wall'd room. What is going on in the World!? I can only imagine what results I'd find if I were to Google "Tickle me Elmo" Hey ooohh!
