Why Can't You Tickle Yourself?

You have always wondered that why can`t you self-tickle yourself as a child. But when someone tickles you can actually feel the tickling sensation creating a sudden motion in your body, but this does not happen when we self-tickle ourselves. 

This is the question you might have had in your mind but in reality, you always find yourself in a loop going round and round around your own questions. This question has also resulted in your brain freeze on a number of occasions. This question has also tricked some of the prominent neurobiologists of this world until recently a satisfying answer was found and this answer was highly graded and appreciated in the scientific circles around the globe. But to get an answer, you have to actually understand the complexity of the human brain, the brain which is still a mystery to us. 

At times it feels like our brain is a high-grade crypt and has been decrypted partially a lot is left to be discovered and decrypted. Now we shall discuss an overview of a specific part of the human brain.

The brain can be divided into several parts, but now we are not interested about all of them. The tickling sensation is believed to be a virtue of the part Cerebellum which is present in the back of the brain. 

Cortex also plays an important role in tickling sensation. Two parts that play an important role in tackling are the somatosensory cortex which processes the touch and the anterior cingulate cortex which processes the information. Now from the first, When someone tickles you, this information is passed by the nerves present in your skin from cell to cell and finally to your body. This actually seems like a long process but happens in a few fractions of a second. This role is played by our cortex and its parts. 

But you self-tickle yourself, your brain can already predict the motion that is going to take place after you tickle yourself, as a result, it loses the element of surprise, and hence predictable we do not feel the tickling sensation we do when someone tickles us.  This role is played by the cerebellum which presents at the back of our brain. This is why you do not feel tickled when you self-tickles yourself.