Can You Tickle Yourself?

Can you tickle yourself..?  Now that is the question of the day for most people or a common Myth to some.  What if I told you the answer for most people is YES, you can usually tickle two separate places on yourself.  The first place you can tickle yourself is the roof of your mouth or palate.  The second area you most likely can tickle yourself, is the bottom of your foot.  Now this is not true for everyone, but in most cases this study in fact will produce high results.

Experiment number one, try to tickle your arm.  Did it work?  Why not you ask?  Because the cerebellum in the back of your brain senses movements and is aware of what you are going to do.  When you try to tickle yourself the cerebellum predicts the sensation and this prediction is used to cancel the tickle response of the brain.

The sensation of tickling is an extremely important part of the science of the brain, and the human body.  It mimics or copies the feelings that are similar to having spiders or bugs crawling on your body.  It is a human reflex to keep these kinds of critters from crawling all over us.

An example of a real life scenario, is when a doctor examines a ticklish patient.  They typically place one of the patient’s hands over their own to prevent the tickling sensation.  Why does this work? Because no matter how ticklish you may be, most people will follow the rule and not be able to tickle themselves.  This is because your brain focuses on what’s going on in the outside world and to prevent important signals from being drowned out by sensations caused by your own actions.

The patient doesn’t feel the tickling because his brain thinks it’s his own hand doing the action!

Now go out and try this if you have not already, and try it out on someone you know.  You may be surprised by the results.  Click here for a pg-13 picture of how to try and tickle yourself.