tickling
| Guest |
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 at 12:59 PM |
Why do we laugh when tickled?
| Curtis |
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 at 8:23 PM |
We have a very complex system for telling us when something is wrong, and pontentially dangerous, about our environment. A large part of this system is our skin, our brain, and a huge network of nerves connecting the two.
Something unexpectedly touching our skin is a clear signal to our brain that "Hey! Pay attention! somethings going on here, and it might kill us or eat us. You should find out what it is. Preferably from a safe distance."
Think of this system -- skin, brain, and nerves -- as a big electronic device. Tickling short-circuits it. The aforementioned "danger" signal is offset by the knowledge that the person tickling you is someone you know at least well enough for them to be tickling you, so there's likely little danger. One input says "Hey - Danger!", while another input says "Relax - there's no danger", and neither signal has a clear priority.
Any time you have conflicting inputs you get what we in the computer science business call "unexpected results". Most people in the real world just call this a "glitch".
Any system sufficiently complex will exhibit some sort of odd, unexpected behavior if you cross the wires for a second. If the behaviour is not harmful and doesn't cause any permanent damage, it's usually left that way.
