

Why do we laugh when tickled? The Headsqueeze team explains in the video above

Since Blakemore’s ground-breaking studies, many others have tried to find ways to find ways to trick the brain into tickling itself. Controlling someone’s foot movements with magnetic brain stimulation, so that their hand tickled their foot against their will, seems to do the trick. But it is one of the few experiments to succeed – others have produced puzzling results.

Van Doorn, for example, tried to give his subjects an out-of-body experience before tickling them. The set-up is relatively simple: the participant is fitted with video goggles that allow them to see from the eyes of the experimenter, who is sitting in front of them. By synchronising their movements, they slowly begin to feel like the experimenter’s body is their own. (For more information on how to swap your body with someone else, read our feature.)

In the midst of the illusion, the participants then had to move a lever that would tickle both bodies at the same time. With the subject confused about which body they were inhabiting, Van Doorn assumed that they would feel the full force of the tickle – but they were largely unmoved by the experience. “No matter if you swap bodies with someone else – you can’t tickle yourself with your own movements,” says Van Doorn.