News release

From: Springer Nature

Neuroscience: Ticklish spots shared across cultures

Ticklish areas of the body appear to be shared across cultures, according to a study of individuals with Chinese, Dutch, and Greek backgrounds published in Nature Human Behaviour. The findings suggest that ticklishness is distinct from other bodily sensations, such as ordinary touch or pain.

Although ticklishness is familiar to most people, scientists still do not fully understand why some body regions are more ticklish than others or whether the phenomenon is shared across cultures.

Ziliang Xiong and Konstantina Kilteni analysed online survey responses from 448 adults (50% female) aged 18 to 30 years from three different cultural backgrounds: Chinese, Dutch, and Greek. Participants reported their experiences and perceptions of tickling and mapped where on their bodies they experienced ticklish sensations. Overall, 98.4% said they had been tickled at least once and 95.8% said they had tickled someone else, while 71% rated themselves as moderately to very ticklish.  Across all three cultural groups, participants described similar reactions (particularly laughter) and consistently identified the neck, armpits, abdomen, and soles of the feet as ticklish areas.

The researchers also found systematic differences between the body regions that were most frequently associated with tickling and those associated with other physical sensations, such as pleasure or pain. This suggests that tickling may be a special somatosensory experience with distinct physiological, neural, and sociopsychological profiles. Body regions that were touched less frequently tended to be more ticklish, supporting a hypothesis originally proposed by Charles Darwin. However, this did not fully explain why some areas are more ticklish than others.

The authors conclude that no single theory fully explains why some body regions are more ticklish than others. Instead, ticklishness is probably the result of a complex mix of sensory, physiological, and psychological factors. Further research is needed to explore whether this research further extends to other cultures, and how social factors such as intent and consent influence the tickling experience.