From: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0716747022/103-1503263-6003043?v=glance&vi=excerpt
I can't leave the subject of laughing (and why we do it) without addressing tickling (and why we can't do it to ourselves). And wouldn't you know it—when something is biological you can almost guarantee that Charles Darwin had something to say about it, and that what he said still has a grain of truth in it. In 1872 Darwin drew an analogy between laughter and tickling: "The imagination is sometimes said to be tickled by a ludicrous idea; and this so-called tickling of the mind is curiously analogous with the body ... The touch must be light, and an idea or event, to be ludicrous, must not be of grave import."
Darwin observed that people who are ticklish are also people who laugh easily for other reasons. They tend to get goosebumps, to blush, and to cry. He suspected these physical phenomena were somehow related. In 1990 Alan Fridlund and Jennifer Loftis, psychologists at the University of California at Santa Barbara, tested these ideas and found them to be true: blushing, laughing, ticklishness, crying, and goosebumps go together. Fridlund and Loftis point out that laughing and crying are sometimes interchangeable ("I laughed until the tears rolled down my face") and that they might both be ways of releasing the tension that is obviously associated with blushing and goosebumps. And although they think there must be a strong genetic component to these related behaviors, they also point out that the environment plays a role. The parental habit of tickling infants to make them laugh establishes the connection between them (and sometimes crying) early in life. The authors did admit that much more study would have to be done.
But while tickling appears to be part of an emotional package, it is curious in and of itself: we want it to end as quickly as possible but we're laughing ourselves silly at the same time. It is probably that need to escape that explains why we can't tickle ourselves: when someone else is doing it we can't be sure they will stop. However, a shorthand explanation like that isn't good enough for psychologists who have actually tried to answer the question, "Why can't we tickle ourselves?" in the lab.
Nearly thirty years ago a team of British psychologists published a report in the journal Nature called "Preliminary Observations on Tickling Oneself." Rather than speculate, they built a tickling box, a complicated thing about the size of a shoebox with a slot in the top. A plastic pointer could be moved along the slot by a handle, and it would tickle the sole of a foot placed on the box. The pointer was cleverly counterweighted so as to exert the same pressure no matter how it was being moved.
Thirty undergraduate students were tickled in different ways: either the experimenter controlled the pointer, or the student did; or the student held the handle passively while the experimenter moved it. The results were more or less what you'd expect. Self-tickling didn't work; being tickled by the experimenter did, but holding the handle passively had an effect that was in between.
A few years later Guy Claxton at the University of London confirmed these findings by showing that subjects were more ticklish if they were being tickled by someone else (five light strokes with a feather in five seconds) than if they held the feather in their own hand but had the hand moved by another person. Apparently the sensation of movement reduces the ticklishness even if the subject isn't in control of the movement. He also found that subjects were more ticklish if they had their eyes closed—the surprise tickle—something that Darwin had suggested. As I was writing this chapter, a new experiment was reported that produced images of the brain during tickling. Those images revealed that, in the case of self-tickling, the cerebellum, a part of the brain responsible for coordinating movements, is activated. Furthermore, the cerebellum might then warn other parts of the brain that a tickle is on its way, dramatically reducing the sensation. When another person does the tickling, the brain's cerebellum is inactive and no warning is sent.
However, the children I know laugh harder when they know exactly where and when they are going to be tickled—the tickle of anticipation. Maybe in their case the cerebellum's warning heightens, rather than dampens, the tickle. Why children are different is not yet well understood.
That last phrase is a good description of the scientific understanding of laughter. There are suggestions, hints, some experiments that shed light on the complex relationship between humor, tickling, laughter, and the brain, but we are still far short of understanding why we respond to funny situations (and sometimes ones that aren't funny at all) with repetitive blasts of air. It almost brings on abrupt expirations due to a sudden contraction of the intercostal muscles.
I really liked the first part about people who already laugh easily being more ticklish...there may be some truth in that. I've often found my self wondering about those who seem to never smile and whether they could possibly be ticklish.
~ toyou
I can't leave the subject of laughing (and why we do it) without addressing tickling (and why we can't do it to ourselves). And wouldn't you know it—when something is biological you can almost guarantee that Charles Darwin had something to say about it, and that what he said still has a grain of truth in it. In 1872 Darwin drew an analogy between laughter and tickling: "The imagination is sometimes said to be tickled by a ludicrous idea; and this so-called tickling of the mind is curiously analogous with the body ... The touch must be light, and an idea or event, to be ludicrous, must not be of grave import."
Darwin observed that people who are ticklish are also people who laugh easily for other reasons. They tend to get goosebumps, to blush, and to cry. He suspected these physical phenomena were somehow related. In 1990 Alan Fridlund and Jennifer Loftis, psychologists at the University of California at Santa Barbara, tested these ideas and found them to be true: blushing, laughing, ticklishness, crying, and goosebumps go together. Fridlund and Loftis point out that laughing and crying are sometimes interchangeable ("I laughed until the tears rolled down my face") and that they might both be ways of releasing the tension that is obviously associated with blushing and goosebumps. And although they think there must be a strong genetic component to these related behaviors, they also point out that the environment plays a role. The parental habit of tickling infants to make them laugh establishes the connection between them (and sometimes crying) early in life. The authors did admit that much more study would have to be done.
But while tickling appears to be part of an emotional package, it is curious in and of itself: we want it to end as quickly as possible but we're laughing ourselves silly at the same time. It is probably that need to escape that explains why we can't tickle ourselves: when someone else is doing it we can't be sure they will stop. However, a shorthand explanation like that isn't good enough for psychologists who have actually tried to answer the question, "Why can't we tickle ourselves?" in the lab.
Nearly thirty years ago a team of British psychologists published a report in the journal Nature called "Preliminary Observations on Tickling Oneself." Rather than speculate, they built a tickling box, a complicated thing about the size of a shoebox with a slot in the top. A plastic pointer could be moved along the slot by a handle, and it would tickle the sole of a foot placed on the box. The pointer was cleverly counterweighted so as to exert the same pressure no matter how it was being moved.
Thirty undergraduate students were tickled in different ways: either the experimenter controlled the pointer, or the student did; or the student held the handle passively while the experimenter moved it. The results were more or less what you'd expect. Self-tickling didn't work; being tickled by the experimenter did, but holding the handle passively had an effect that was in between.
A few years later Guy Claxton at the University of London confirmed these findings by showing that subjects were more ticklish if they were being tickled by someone else (five light strokes with a feather in five seconds) than if they held the feather in their own hand but had the hand moved by another person. Apparently the sensation of movement reduces the ticklishness even if the subject isn't in control of the movement. He also found that subjects were more ticklish if they had their eyes closed—the surprise tickle—something that Darwin had suggested. As I was writing this chapter, a new experiment was reported that produced images of the brain during tickling. Those images revealed that, in the case of self-tickling, the cerebellum, a part of the brain responsible for coordinating movements, is activated. Furthermore, the cerebellum might then warn other parts of the brain that a tickle is on its way, dramatically reducing the sensation. When another person does the tickling, the brain's cerebellum is inactive and no warning is sent.
However, the children I know laugh harder when they know exactly where and when they are going to be tickled—the tickle of anticipation. Maybe in their case the cerebellum's warning heightens, rather than dampens, the tickle. Why children are different is not yet well understood.
That last phrase is a good description of the scientific understanding of laughter. There are suggestions, hints, some experiments that shed light on the complex relationship between humor, tickling, laughter, and the brain, but we are still far short of understanding why we respond to funny situations (and sometimes ones that aren't funny at all) with repetitive blasts of air. It almost brings on abrupt expirations due to a sudden contraction of the intercostal muscles.
I really liked the first part about people who already laugh easily being more ticklish...there may be some truth in that. I've often found my self wondering about those who seem to never smile and whether they could possibly be ticklish.
~ toyou
That means that the girl I'm after at the moment is sure to be ticklish!
