When someone massages my neck or even just runs a finger across my skin it feels pleasant, but doing the same things to myself basically yields no sensation. I even remember going to the doctor as a child and enjoying the feeling of getting my ears checked with whatever the tool is they use for it, or the feeling when my grandma would comb through my hair to check for lice. Again doing it myself doesn’t feel nearly as good even though it’s the same physical movements. Why?
In: Biology
Your brain, to a degree, blocks the feeling of a touch it can perfectly predict. We know this because researchers got people to try to tickle themselves with a joystick controlled robot arm. When there was no delay between the movement of the joystick and the arm people weren’t able to tickle themselves, but if they added a small amount of delay so the movements weren’t perfectly synced up they suddenly could tickle themselves.
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