# Why can't I tickle myself? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 7, 2002, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-tickle-myself/131133 "2002-10-07T01:57:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![missingbigbad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/fbc32d/32.png) [@missingbigbad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/missingbigbad)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2002, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-tickle-myself/131133/1 "2002-10-07T01:57:10Z")
Why can’t I tckle myself? This question was posed by my 9 year-old daughter. Anyone got an answer? Thanks ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2002, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-tickle-myself/131133/2 "2002-10-07T02:19:31Z")
**Cecil Adams** on [Is it possible for someone to be tickled to death?](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_207.html) > [@](#): > > 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. Darwin may not have the last word on this subject. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2002, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-tickle-myself/131133/3 "2002-10-07T05:10:09Z")
I read somewhere that a researcher hooked a machine up to people so that it delayed their movements (some kind of robotic arm I guess). They could only tickle themselves if there was a certain amount of delay added to their movements. Can’t remember any other details. Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2002, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-tickle-myself/131133/4 "2002-10-07T05:37:06Z")
You can’t tickle yourself because you, personally, are not ticklish enough _I_ on the other hand am perfectly capable of tickling myself at will. In fact, I am capable of tickling myself on the soles of the feet **without moving a muscle** by the following expedient. [ul] [li]Sit on floor with soles of feet exposed to empty air, no shoes, no socks[/li][li]Concentrate on what the soles of my feet feel like[/li][/ul] This extraordinary talent is not as useful as you might think… Of course, you could just be using the wrong technique. In my experience, the “dig fingers into sensitive squishy parts (eg stomach)” technique does _not_ work when the object of your tickling is yourself. The “draw fingers lightly along sensitive area (soles of feet, base of neck)” technique is much better for self-tickling. If you’re into that sort of thing. ---
**Author:** ![zen101](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c68b51/32.png) [@zen101](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zen101)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2002, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-tickle-myself/131133/5 "2002-10-07T06:54:19Z")
The theory on the science program hosted by Alan Alda which was on public broadcasting last month was that we evolved in such a way as to prevent us from tickling ourselves. The reason for this evolution was given that any animal which spends a good deal of time responding to itself will 1) draw unwanted predatory attention 2) ignore relevant external input and 3) not get much rest at all (I imagine waking up fifty times a night because I accidentally touched my own foot wrong). ---
**Author:** ![femtosecond](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f08c70/32.png) [@femtosecond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/femtosecond)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2002, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-tickle-myself/131133/6 "2002-10-07T10:33:51Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by engineer\_comp\_geek_ > **Can’t remember any other details. Sorry.** It’s mentioned here: [Howstuffworks “Why can’t you tickle yourself?”](http://www.howstuffworks.com/question511.htm) ---
**Author:** ![barbitu8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/839c29/32.png) [@barbitu8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barbitu8)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2002, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-tickle-myself/131133/7 "2002-10-07T15:59:27Z")
I’m quoting now from \*Laughter, A Scientific Investigation \* by Robert R. Provine (20000. > [@](#): > > Solo tickle is even emptier than solo sex. Most adults can masturbate to climax, whereas self-tickle is a pale shadow of its social counterpart. You can no more tickle yourself to laughter than you can startle yourself. Tickle…is the product of a social interaction between a tickler…and the ticklee… Socially stimulated laughter develops around 3 1/2 to 4 months of life, and tickle (tactilely stimulated laughter) appears about this time or shortly after. Because tickle requires the discrimination of self from nonself, the study of tickle and laugh development may provide indirect evidence about the emergence of self in infants. The significance of laughter and tickle to the baby is well established. Babies laugh when tickled/touched by their mothers, a vocalization that leads to more maternal contact… Laughter…are important means by which preverbal infants control the behavior of their mother and other caregivers. After speech develops, laughter, smiling, tickle, and other nonverbal signals remain important channels of communciation with parents, family, friends, and lovers…It serves a…function, the establishment and maintenance of relationships… > > [The author here goes on to describe some robotic tickling techniques.] > > Using function MRI… technology, Blakemore and colleagues implicated the cerebellum as the site of this stimulus cancellation process. [The author previously stated that a human’s inability to tickle herself is due to a neurological cancellation of the sensory consequence of self-produced movements.] Tactile autostimulation may trigger cerebellar signals (corollary discharges) that block activation of the somatosensory cortex and the experience of self-tickle and other self-produced tactile stimuli… > > [While taking a shower], I was startled to find that my stroking the sole of my foot tickled more than it should have given my pronouncements about one’s inability to tickle onself…Contralateral (opposite side) tickle had a greater effect than ipsilateral (same side) tickle. {The author describes this same experiment with 25 students, minus the shower, with the same conclusion.] [Thus] it tickles more when we reach across the body midline and stimulate the opposite foot. This conclusion makes sense within the context of nonself (otherness) detection considered above. The author then states that with ipsilateral tickle, the stimuli arrive at the neurological comparator in the brain at roughly the same time. However, with contralateral tickle, information from the tickling hand and the tickled foot arrive at relatively different times because they ascent on different sides of the spinal cord and must cross the body mid-line an additional time to reach the comparator. For more details, please read the book. ---
**Author:** ![TelcontarStorm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3ab097/32.png) [@TelcontarStorm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TelcontarStorm)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2002, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-tickle-myself/131133/8 "2002-10-07T18:42:39Z")
[hyjack] does that explain how my brother is the only person on the planet who can get me laughing so hard via ticlkle that I piss myself? Noone else, not my ex hub, not my oldest brother, not my daughter, noone else can even get a responce to a tickle out of me. Is it a ghost memory from youth? Surely, he dosn’t have that good of a technique? It does however explain the ability to turn off being ticklish at will.[/hyjack] ---
**Author:** ![barbitu8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/839c29/32.png) [@barbitu8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barbitu8)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2002, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-tickle-myself/131133/9 "2002-10-07T19:47:24Z")
I should add a bit more info from the book. > [@](#): > > Consider the details of themechanism that prevents self-tickling. When we intend to touch our own skin, our brain sends a command (efferent) to our muscles to touch our body at a specific place. This motor act of self-touching triggers a corresponding sensory event (afferent) from the touched skin that is sent back to the brain where it is compared with a copy (efferent copy) of the original outgoing command to the muscles. If the sensory message from the skin matches up with the efferent copy of the command to the muscles, the two cancel each other out and no tickle response is initiated. If your skin is touched by someone or something else, however, there is no efferent copy to cancel the sensory message from the skin, and the touch stimulus is interpreted as exteroceptive (nonself-produced) touch, or especially if it is moving, tickle.