Kilteni Konstantina
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.
Sci Adv. 2025 May 23;11(21):eadt0350. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adt0350.
Gargalesis, or tickle, is one of the most trivial yet enigmatic human behaviors. We do not know how a touch becomes ticklish or why we respond to other people's tickles but not our own. No theory satisfactorily explains why touch on some body areas feels more ticklish than on others or why some people are highly sensitive while others remain unresponsive. Gargalesis is likely the earliest trigger for laughter in life, but it is unclear whether we laugh because we enjoy it. Socrates, Aristotle, Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, and Darwin theorized about tickling, but after two millennia of intense philosophical interest, experimentation remains scarce. This review argues that gargalesis is an exhilarating scientific puzzle with far-reaching implications for developmental, sensorimotor, social, affective, clinical, and evolutionary neuroscience. We reflect on the challenges in defining and eliciting ticklish sensations in the lab and unraveling their neural mechanism, discuss five classic yet unanswered questions about tickle, and suggest directions for future research.
呵痒，即挠痒痒，是人类最微不足道却又神秘莫测的行为之一。我们不知道触摸是如何变得痒痒的，也不知道为什么我们对别人挠痒痒有反应，而对自己挠痒痒却没有反应。没有一种理论能令人满意地解释为什么触摸身体的某些部位比其他部位感觉更痒痒，或者为什么有些人高度敏感而另一些人却毫无反应。呵痒可能是人生中最早引发笑声的诱因，但我们是否因为享受而发笑尚不清楚。苏格拉底、亚里士多德、培根、伽利略、笛卡尔和达尔文都对挠痒痒进行过理论探讨，但经过两千年的浓厚哲学兴趣之后，实验仍然很少。本综述认为，呵痒是一个令人兴奋的科学谜题，对发育、感觉运动、社会、情感、临床和进化神经科学有着深远的影响。我们思考了在实验室中定义和引发痒痒感觉以及揭示其神经机制方面的挑战，讨论了关于挠痒痒的五个经典但未得到解答的问题，并提出了未来研究的方向。
