Anticipating our own touch -- for example in tickling oneself -- reduces its impact, says Queen's psychologist Dr. Randy Flanagan, a member of the university's Centre for Neuroscience Studies. This is ...

Reach into your pocket and grab a handful of coins. Now close your eyes; without looking, can you tell the denomination of each coin? You probably can, thanks to specialized touch sensors on your ...

One thing we know about tickling: It makes us laugh. But why? And what exactly is it? Is it pain? Pleasure? Aristotle wrote about tickling all the way back in 350 B.C. Darwin did too, in 1872. But, of ...

Admit it: You love being tickled. There’s something about that “pleasurable agony,” the strange combination of discomfort and pleasure that elicits such explosive fits of shrieks and laughter. And it ...

I have just discovered a profoundly human, evolutionarily crucial fact about the new baby in our house: He likes to be tickled. This isn’t a joke. For centuries, the deepest of thinkers — Aristotle, ...

Need a good laugh? The feeling is pretty universal, according to researchers who tickled rats for the sake of science. When the animals received a 10-second tickle from a gloved hand, they responded ...

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – For some, tickling is a harmless game. But for others, it’s a deeply, unpleasant annoyance. Regardless of sensitivity, questions remain: What’s the science behind tickling and ...

Tickling is a mysterious phenomenon: this specialized form of touch is so powerful that it can send us into almost uncontrollable fits of shrieking, gasping laughter or defenseless pleas for mercy.

"Tickling the rat" has got to be a euphemism for something. But it's also a way of studying the neurobiology of depression. At least that's what Wöhr et al say in a new paper. They started from the ...