Can you tickle yourself?

Can you tickle yourself?
Similar to licking your elbow or sneezing while keeping your eyes open, you're not supposed to be able to tickle yourself. While some of you are busy looking for a feather to test this theory out, science has a diagnosis for those of you who happen to possess the ability to tickle yourself: you might be schizophrenic.

A recent study that will be published in the April 2016 issue of Consciousness and Cognition assessed how healthy subjects with "pronounced schizotypal traits" responded to tickling sensations. Anne-Laure Lemaitre, Marion Luyat and Gilles Lafargue, French researchers and authors of the study, were building upon a 2000 study showing that people with schizophrenia were able to perceive self-produced somatosensory stimulation.

A possible theory explaining why schizophrenics react to self-tickling is their neurology; their brains are not always able to discern self-initiated actions from external ones.

Article:
http://mic.com/articles/139406/can-you-tickle-yourself-science-says-you-might-be-schizophrenic

Paper;
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/295076663_Individuals_with_pronounced_schizotypal_traits_are_particularly_successful_in_tickling_themselves

#neuroscience   #tickle   #schizophrenia