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Updated: May 5, 2026

Tickling, a Technique for Inducing Positive Affect When Handling Rats
Published on: May 8, 2018
Can you tickle yourself if you swap bodies with someone else?
George Van Doorn1, Jakob Hohwy2, Mark Symmons1
1School of Applied Media and Social Sciences, Monash University, Northways Road, Churchill, Victoria 3842, Australia.
Abstract:
The effect of the body transfer illusion on the perceived strength of self- and externally-generated "tickle" sensations was investigated. As expected, externally generated movement produced significantly higher ratings of tickliness than those associated with self-generated movements. Surprisingly, the body transfer illusion had no influence on the ratings of tickliness, suggesting that highly surprising, and therefore hard to predict, experiences of body image and first-person perspective do not abolish the attenuation of tickle sensations. In addition, evidence was found that a version of the rubber hand illusion exists within the body transfer illusion. We situate our findings within the larger debate over sensory attenuation: (1) there is an attenuation of prediction errors that depends upon the context in which sensory input is predicted (i.e., efference copy), and (2) sensory attenuation is a necessary consequence of self-generated movement irrespective of context (i.e., active inference). The results support the notion of active inference.
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