Can you tickle yourself if you swap bodies with someone else?
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Updated: May 5, 2026

Tickling, a Technique for Inducing Positive Affect When Handling Rats
Published on: May 8, 2018
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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