Tickling Study -- things that make you go hmmm

[stacyshippen]

Hi all

I found this link on a web site devoted to opiates:

http://opioids.com/tickling/index.html

In adolescent rats, 50-kHz vocalizations are most evident during tickling and rough-and-tumble play. The following experiments evaluated whether 50-kHz vocalizations reflect positive social affect by determining (1) if tickling is a rewarding event, (2) if social or isolate housing conditions differentially influence the response (since housing condition has been found to effect the reward magnitude of social encounters), and (3) if drugs that work on mu-opiate receptors, which has been hypothesized to control positive social affect, modulate tickling. Tickling was positively reinforcing as demonstrated by elevated operant behavior, conditioned place preference, and approach measures. A significant negative correlation between vocalization rate and approach latency measures was found. Social housing reduced tickle-induced vocalizations and approach speeds compared to isolate housing. Naloxone (1 mg/kg) increased vocalization in the socially housed rats and decreased it in isolated Subjects (Ss). These findings suggest that tickling can be used to induce positive social affect in rodents, and that it is modulated by endogenous opioids.

You all think...HUH???

It took me several readings to get through it...but...there are two thoughts that I have...

...wouldn't it be great if someone applied this experiment to human beings? Maybe the answer to depression and antisocial behavior is a good, rollicking tickle fight, eh?
Where do I volunteer? 🙂

...I have no idea what Naloxone is...but I can't help but wonder if it makes the person more ticklish or just laugh harder? 🙂

Just another musing on a Friday...

Stacy

 

[Lynchy]

I think there is such a thing as tickle therapy in mental health services, but I don't know how successful it was. Plus, I think it was only done with kids.

I know it'd help my depression if I had more tickle action! 😛

 

[TickledToDeath]

A modern indepth sudy on tickling and being tickled should be done on humans as I think it would be quite theraputic in a positive manner on several levels.
As for social rats, a rat is a rat I don't rightly care how friggin social it is........🙄 😉 😛 😀


TTD

 

[professor tickl]

naloxone

Naloxone is what in medicine is called an "opoid antangonist". In other words it is a reversal agent for narcotic drugs (heroin, morphine, vicodin, etc.). So if someone shows up gorked out on heroin barely breathing, you inject this naloxone, and BAMM they wake right up and you just reversed their buzz (and they are usually madder than a wet hen about it!). Whether it would make someone more ticklish or not is uncertain. There is a theoretical argument as tickling is carried by the same nerve fibers as pain (as opposed to the fibers that carry light touch sensation) which is why in the Italian pain research literature tickling is sometimes used as a pain substitute in human research trials (gotta love those Italians!). Anyhow, presuming this drug would make you more "pain receptor vulnerable" and therefore theoretically (and it is a HUGE theoretical jump) one could become more ticklish. That having been said I have know people whith very high pain tolerance who are very ticklish and vice versa so I doubt there is a one to one correlation. The comprehensive understanding of pain has eluded the scientific community thus far and therefore tickling along with it. Ah, but there is a charm to mystery, though don't you think? Hope that helps answer your question.

Cordially yours,

Professor Tickle

 

[the_Baron]

i'll consider you all signed up stacy. see you in sussex!

 

[ShadowTklr]

I think there is such a thing as tickle therapy in mental health services, but I don't know how successful it was. Plus, I think it was only done with kids.

I know it'd help my depression if I had more tickle action! 😛

In the United States, there is an abusive form of "Therapy" still practiced by some sadists, posing as therapists, called "Attachment Therapy." It's been around for about 30 years, and was originally developed as a means of "treating" children with Autism or "Attachment Disorder -" the invented term used to lend legitimacy to what is tantamount to torture.

This barbaric practice calls for the child to be held by several adults (sometimes including the parents) so he cannot escape. The idea is to produce severe reactions in the child so he will release the rage within him.

A therapist taunts the child as he is being held against his will. If the reaction produced from this frustrating practice does not prove sufficient, the therapist may resort to such things as relentless tickling while the child is held, licking his face, pinching, placing hands over the child’s nose and mouth to produce panic. These methods are used to cause the child the greatest degree of discomfort possible in order to get to the repressed rage.

Attachment Therapy was also used under many other names, such as Z-therapy. While Z therapy also had it's roots in the treatment of children with autism, it was used in the 70s by some quacks as a method for the treatment of depression. A “patient” suffering from depression would be draped over the laps of 5 or 6 treatment associates, face up, and held still. The therapist would ask personal, humiliating questions. When the questions were not answered directly, the group would tickle, poke, and/or pinch the patient until her resistance turned to frustration, then rage, and then emotional breakdown causing uncontrollable sobbing. This would be the point at which the group would then hug and comfort the patient, reintroducing attachment and a feeling of being loved.

Talk about non-consensual!