The neuroscience of human tickle perception

Introduction

Tickle is one of the most enigmatic human sensations: we do not know how a touch can turn into tickle, and why our brain responds to other people’s tickles but not to our own. To date, there is no theory that can satisfactorily explain why touch on certain body areas feels more ticklish than on others, and why some people are more prone to be tickled compared to others.

Knowledge Gap

Despite this fundamental knowledge gap, experiments on tickle perception have been extremely scarce, and there is currently no active research on the topic at an international level.

Project Overview

In TICKLISHUMAN, I propose a new interdisciplinary approach to understand the neuroscience of human tickle perception, based on:

1. Modern haptic technology
2. Somatosensory psychophysics
3. Multivariate pattern analyses of neuroimaging data
4. Brain stimulation
5. Advanced statistical modeling techniques

Research Methodology

First, my team and I will establish a stimulation protocol that optimally induces tickle sensations, and we will identify their neural profile.

Building upon my findings on how the brain differentiates between self-generated and externally generated touch, we will:

• Delineate the body maps where the perception of tickle is amplified
• Determine the brain mechanism that cancels self-generated tickle sensations

Finally, we will model individual differences in tickle perception as a function of central, peripheral, personality, and demographic characteristics.

Potential Impact

TICKLISHUMAN has the strong potential to radically transform our scientific and popular thinking about the social, motor, and clinical neuroscience of tickle.

The novel insights from the project will permit exploration of the very undervalued clinical and functional implications of tickle in the next decades, including:

• Its use as a cognitive biomarker in schizophrenia and autism
• Its evolutionary function across species