*Tickle_Torture
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This is an article I clipped out of the local newspaper about two years ago. I saved it and felt it necessary to share it with you guys. This article disscuses the science behind tickling. Enjoy!
It might be 'torture' but we laugh anyway
By: Tom Siegfried
For most people tickling is like torture-with a twist. The unpleasantness evokes uncontrollable laughter.
Most people would rather tickle than be tickled. Ticklees typically protest and attempt to escape. Yet, they smile and giggle all through the ordeal.
So do people like to be tickled or not? Don't laugh. Tickling is one of science's great riddles.
"Illustrious thinkers have pondered tickle's mysteries for over two millennia," writes psychologist and tickle researcher Christine Harris of the University of California, San Diego. Aristotle and Plato, Francis Bacon and Galileo, and even Charles Darwin have speculated about the paradoxes of tickling. For centuries, these and other resaerchers have attempted to explain why tickling mixes laughter with irritation. But mordern research suggests that all the old explanations can't survive serious scrutiny.
Until recently, progress has been limited mostly to establishing a tickling vocabulary. Scientists refer to the phenomenon of tickling simply as "tickle"; to maintain scientific secrecy they divide it into two catagories: knismesis and gargalesis. Civilians are permitted to say "light tickle" and "heavy tickle."
Light tickle (knismesis) is not so mysterious. It's the "moving itch" sensation of a feather caressing the skin, or perhaps a crawling bug. The annoyance caused by light tickle is valuable; it alerts the skin owner to smack a possibly dangerous insect. Evolution would naturally favor individuals who employed such a survival response.
But light tickle doesn't make you laugh. That's a job for heavy tickle (gargalesis), most effective when applied to certain body areas. Underarms, ribs, the waist and the soles of the feet are prime tickle targets.
You have to be carful about whom you tickle, though. "Most people... report that they do not much like being tickled," writes Harris in the current issue of American Scientist .
Such resistance is understandable. "There is little doubt that prolonged tickle can be extremely unpleasant," Harris writes. There are even reports that medieval torturers occasionlly tickled their victims to death-literally.
Nevertheless, some people (especially certain spouses) apparently think that tickling is welcomed.
"Many people seem convinced that other people enjoy being tickled," writes Harris. "Even though I hate to be tickled... , I still find it hard to look into the ticklee's laughing, smiling face and not think 'he is really enjoying this."
So what gives? Maybe the laughter response is to tickle is simply learned in childhood, as parents always smile while tickling a helpless baby.
But one scientist and his wife wisely refrained from smiling at their baby while tickling, and by age seven months the baby laughed when tickled anyway.
Other theories suggest that the laughter is a response to a fun interpersonal interaction. But Harris and collaborators have tested this idea by telling blindfolded subjects that their feet were being tickled by a machine. (Actually, it was a human hiding under a table.) The subjects laughed just as much when they thought it was a machine doing the tickling. And it didn't matter if the experimentor was in the room or not.
One of few clues to the laughter-tickle connection is that tickle laughter is not the same as the laugh-response to comedy. By showing students funny film clips, Harris demonstrated the phenomenon (well known to comedians) that an amusing "warm-up" period induces a greater response to humor. But not to tickling. "We concluded that tickling does not lead to the same internal state of amusment as does comedy," Harris wrote.
Still, that doesn't explain the tickle-laughter response evolved in humans. It's easier to explain another tickle mystery-why can't you elict laughter by tickling yourself. Laughter, as Aristotle pointed out, is often associated with surprise. But your brain knows ahead of time exactly how your fingers are going to tickle yourself. Brain scans reveal different patterns of nerve activity between self-tickling and other-tickling (although in those experiments, the tickling was light, because vigorous laughter and motion messes up the brain scan).
Harris suggests that the tickle response may have evolved as a sort of practice for protecting vulnerable areas of the body. But to develop skill and evasive manouvers, it would be helpful for a friend or a relative to assault such zones. In preverbal times, smiling and laughter would enourage your colleagues to provide such a practice session.
Of course, Harris acknowledges, it may be impossible to prove such an explaination. And some taxpayers may wonder whether it's worth a lot of research funding to try.
It might be 'torture' but we laugh anyway
By: Tom Siegfried
For most people tickling is like torture-with a twist. The unpleasantness evokes uncontrollable laughter.
Most people would rather tickle than be tickled. Ticklees typically protest and attempt to escape. Yet, they smile and giggle all through the ordeal.
So do people like to be tickled or not? Don't laugh. Tickling is one of science's great riddles.
"Illustrious thinkers have pondered tickle's mysteries for over two millennia," writes psychologist and tickle researcher Christine Harris of the University of California, San Diego. Aristotle and Plato, Francis Bacon and Galileo, and even Charles Darwin have speculated about the paradoxes of tickling. For centuries, these and other resaerchers have attempted to explain why tickling mixes laughter with irritation. But mordern research suggests that all the old explanations can't survive serious scrutiny.
Until recently, progress has been limited mostly to establishing a tickling vocabulary. Scientists refer to the phenomenon of tickling simply as "tickle"; to maintain scientific secrecy they divide it into two catagories: knismesis and gargalesis. Civilians are permitted to say "light tickle" and "heavy tickle."
Light tickle (knismesis) is not so mysterious. It's the "moving itch" sensation of a feather caressing the skin, or perhaps a crawling bug. The annoyance caused by light tickle is valuable; it alerts the skin owner to smack a possibly dangerous insect. Evolution would naturally favor individuals who employed such a survival response.
But light tickle doesn't make you laugh. That's a job for heavy tickle (gargalesis), most effective when applied to certain body areas. Underarms, ribs, the waist and the soles of the feet are prime tickle targets.
You have to be carful about whom you tickle, though. "Most people... report that they do not much like being tickled," writes Harris in the current issue of American Scientist .
Such resistance is understandable. "There is little doubt that prolonged tickle can be extremely unpleasant," Harris writes. There are even reports that medieval torturers occasionlly tickled their victims to death-literally.
Nevertheless, some people (especially certain spouses) apparently think that tickling is welcomed.
"Many people seem convinced that other people enjoy being tickled," writes Harris. "Even though I hate to be tickled... , I still find it hard to look into the ticklee's laughing, smiling face and not think 'he is really enjoying this."
So what gives? Maybe the laughter response is to tickle is simply learned in childhood, as parents always smile while tickling a helpless baby.
But one scientist and his wife wisely refrained from smiling at their baby while tickling, and by age seven months the baby laughed when tickled anyway.
Other theories suggest that the laughter is a response to a fun interpersonal interaction. But Harris and collaborators have tested this idea by telling blindfolded subjects that their feet were being tickled by a machine. (Actually, it was a human hiding under a table.) The subjects laughed just as much when they thought it was a machine doing the tickling. And it didn't matter if the experimentor was in the room or not.
One of few clues to the laughter-tickle connection is that tickle laughter is not the same as the laugh-response to comedy. By showing students funny film clips, Harris demonstrated the phenomenon (well known to comedians) that an amusing "warm-up" period induces a greater response to humor. But not to tickling. "We concluded that tickling does not lead to the same internal state of amusment as does comedy," Harris wrote.
Still, that doesn't explain the tickle-laughter response evolved in humans. It's easier to explain another tickle mystery-why can't you elict laughter by tickling yourself. Laughter, as Aristotle pointed out, is often associated with surprise. But your brain knows ahead of time exactly how your fingers are going to tickle yourself. Brain scans reveal different patterns of nerve activity between self-tickling and other-tickling (although in those experiments, the tickling was light, because vigorous laughter and motion messes up the brain scan).
Harris suggests that the tickle response may have evolved as a sort of practice for protecting vulnerable areas of the body. But to develop skill and evasive manouvers, it would be helpful for a friend or a relative to assault such zones. In preverbal times, smiling and laughter would enourage your colleagues to provide such a practice session.
Of course, Harris acknowledges, it may be impossible to prove such an explaination. And some taxpayers may wonder whether it's worth a lot of research funding to try.
