So, why cant you tickle your self?

[Janx]

Go ahead, try it. Feel silly? I know, I did too.

I know Cecilhas mentioned this but didn’t give any answers, and that was a long time ago. So what’s the deal?

BTW, I bring new meaning to the word ticklish, but try as I might, I cant be tickled by my own hands, even with a feather or weed or something.

[Ice_Wolf]

I think the answer actually is there in the column you linked to, Janx:

Consider, for instance, that you cannot tickle yourself. According to Darwin, this is because “the precise point to be tickled must not be known,” lest some sort of mental tickle-canceling mechanism be automatically invoked.

From this we deduce not only that it takes two to tickle, but that the tickling sensation is associated with a loss of control over the relationship.

I’ve seen it linked to the “fear/threat response” elsewhere, too. If you try tickling yourself, you know it’s coming …

[Janx]

Yes,** Ice Wolf ** I had considered this almost satisfactory over the years since I read this but I have a problem with…

but that the tickling sensation is associated with a loss of control over the relationship.

As well as…

Rather, it’s a profoundly ambiguous act fraught with numerous mundo bizarro psychosexual implications.

And…

Furthermore, consider the fine line between pleasure and pain that tickling entails. You entertain babies by tickling them, but your girlfriend is making you suffer by causing you to enjoy yourself (i.e., laugh) too much.

This is all just a bit on the philosophical/mamby pamby side to count as the real deal, hard core scientific explanation we have come to expect here at the Straight Dope boot camp of ignorance eradication.

**… loss of control over the relationship… **

**… mundo bizarro psychosexual implications… **

**… fine line between pleasure and pain… **

Not exactly the kind of language I would expect to see in this weeks issue of Electronuromography weekly if you know what I mean.

[Ice_Wolf]

Yeah, and my own:

If you try tickling yourself, you know it’s coming …

ain’t exactly Med. Journal stuff either!

Try this.

…heavy tickling by oneself of one’s own body does not lead to laughter. Imaging studies suggest that the brain’s cerebellum anticipates the tickling movements, and thus unconsciously nullifies the required element of surprise.

[FranticMad]

I agree with Ice Wolf. First, the psychoanalytic explanations are just not credible (power relationships, psychosexual mumbo jumbo, etc.)

If I tickle myself, I experience very little emotional reaction. If I think a spider is crawling on my skin, giving me exactly the same physical stimulus, I react with horror (leap out of my chair, yelp, slap my own skin and tear off my shirt). If my lover gently creates the same physical sensation for me, I feel it as a tickle.

I think it’s an example of “feed forward”. Your brain has a pre-existing expectation of what can happen, and routes the sensation to a different part of the brain in each case (probably through the thalamus at some point).

Anyway, I think tickling is a response governed by the social parts of our brain.

[bibliophage]

This is a comment on one of Cecil’s columns, so I’ll move this to the Comments on Cecil’s Columns forum.

bibliophage
moderator GQ

[brainfizz]

You can tickle yourself…

Try ticling the roof of your mouth with your tongue. Always works for me, but then again, I find it hard to cut my own toenails coz they feel too ticklish.

[Janx]

Oh My Ghawd! I just tickled myself!

It works Brainfizz!

Wow! I wonder why?

Answer me THAT, said the cat in the hat!

You can’t tickle your out sides, but you CAN tickle your INSIDES?!?

(so if you tickle your self you know whats comming)

[chorpler]

I never understood what the whole “you can’t tickle yourself” thing was about. When my stomach is tickled, whether by somebody else or by my own hands, my abdominal muscles contract violently (feels like they’re trying to pull away from the unpleasantness), and my reaction is not so much “tee hee!” as “GOOD LORD, WHAT DID I EVER DO TO DESERVE THIS AGONY?”

[Woeg]

I can tickle my own feet and get the same reaction as I get when tickled by someone else. It’s the only place on my body that this appears to happen though…how odd!

[Irishman]

Try running your fingertips across your skin as lightly as possible and still touch. It gives a tickle. Not quite the same as a poke in the ribs, but it’s there.