Just take a duster and rub it gently on your feet, did you feel tickling sensation? No. Now ask someone to do the same job and you may start laughing out of your wits if he or she does not stop. Have you ever thought why it is so?
When someone tickles you, you have a sensation but when you do it yourself there is no effect. Neuroscientists offer an interesting answer to this. They say that it is a central part of our self and agency to be able to distinguish between your movement and the action of others. This is the trait that smartest robots cannot manage to replicate.
From a research conducted on this question it was found out that whenever we move our limbs, our brain’s cerebellum emits precise predictions of the body’s movements and then sends a second shadow signal that slows down activity in the somatosensory cortex (where tactile feeling are processed).
This is the reason we do not feel the sensations with much intensity and thus we remain tranquil. The researchers also conducted an experiment to check if there are ways to fool the process and whether people could tickle themselves.
So a machine was designed that allowed the subjects to move a stick which gently rubbed a piece of foam over their palm sometimes rapidly and at other times with a delay of up to 200 milliseconds. Several other experiments were conducted to get the answer of same question but the experiments gave puzzling results.
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