Tickling Yourself

By Anupum Pant

In most cases tickling yourself is tough. That is because whenever you try to tickle yourself, at the back of your head (yes, really at the back, in a part of the brain called the cerebellum) you know that the sensation was caused as a result of your own movement. That way, the brain is able to predict the sensation and is able to nullify it.

When someone else tries it on you, the brain fails to predict the movement and the somatosensory cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex fire up to make you feel the tickle.

But have you ever tried tickling yourself with a fake hand? It still doesn’t work! Even when you don’t use your direct body part, your brain knows and can predict movement. Unless of course, the fake hand is being used by someone else. It’s interesting but believable that tickling yourself with a fake rubber hand doesn’t fool the brain. But there’s more.

In fact, if you had a tickling robot which could be controlled with a remote control, you still won’t be able to use the remote to operate it and make yourself tickle. While, if some one else had the control and they tried to control the robot to tickle you, you’d feel more ticklish. Unless, there’s a delay. It blows my mind to think about that!

What if, there was a robot which could control the remote control of a tickling robot, and you could control the first one with another remote control. Would you be able to tickle yourself using this contraption? I’m saying no, you still won’t be able to tickle yourself if there was no delay in between. What do you say?

Yes, delay is crucial here. Suppose you had a long contraption which would make movements after a few seconds of delay with respect to the control (which you have in your hand), you’d feel more ticklish, if you tried. Studies say, more the delay, the more ticklish it is.

Note: People with schizophrenia can tickle themselves, using their own hands, fake hand or something else.

Remember, I started the article with “most cases”. That is because there are a couple of ways to tickle yourself successfully. Try making little circles with a soft touch behind your knee for instance. Or use a feather on the sole of your foot. Or, try making circles with your tongue on the roof of your mouth where there’s a ribbed texture…

Human Echolocation – Seeing With Your Ears

By Anupum Pant

Bats can see, but Daniel Kish can’t. Due to Retinal Cancer (Retinoblastoma), Daniel has been completely blind since the age of 13 months. To save his life, both his eyes had to be removed at a young age. But, even with no eyes, he can see. He sees with his ears. People call him the real-life batman.

What? When Daniel was young, he started making a clicking sound with his tongue to understand his environment. Little did he know, at a young age, he had mastered Echolocation – A technique used by dolphins, and bats to navigate when there is no light. At the age of 11, only when a friend told him about Echolocation, did he realize what he was really doing.

How? By listening to the reflected clicking sound, Daniel is able to map the shape, dimension, depth and density of objects in his brain. Like we use light to see, he uses sound to create a 3D map in his brain. He has trained his visual cortex to process non-visual information. With this ability he is able to ride a bicycle around, effortlessly. Think about riding with your eyes closed. He does it everyday.

According to him, what he does isn’t rocket science. He thinks every one, if trained well, can do it. With a concern for blind people around the world who aren’t encouraged to use echolocation to move around, he started an organization where he teaches people how to do it. You can watch his TED talk here. [video]

Side note: In a Tamil movie, Taandavam, he was the one who taught Shiva to move around using echolocation.

If you think Daniel’s ability doesn’t talk enough about the amazing human brain. This video of David Eagleman talking about how our brain perceives the world, will probably make you appreciate it [the brain] more. Watch it till the end where he talks about these plug-in-brain devices.
In short, brain can learn to interpret various kinds of signals to produce an image.

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