Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Photography major - Research has found that boys’ toes are the most itchy, but what about girls?

Research has found that boys’ toes are the most itchy, but what about girls?

Author Li Muzi

A study recently released in the "Transactions of the American Computer Society on Human-Computer Interaction" found that the most ticklish position on the soles of women's feet is the center of the arch, while for men Say, it's slightly closer to the toes.

A machine designed to create optimal stimulation for tickling feet can relieve stress in people by inducing uncontrollable laughter, researchers say. The device is battery-powered and can be installed in any ordinary shoe.

To identify the most ticklish parts of the soles of the feet, Don Samitha Elvitigala of the University of Auckland in New Zealand and colleagues used magnet-driven brushes to stimulate different parts of the soles of the feet.

The team conducted a test on 13 participants (7 women and 6 men) - after a brush was moved to different locations on the soles of the feet, they rated each on a seven-point scale. The itching sensation at the site was scored.

The average value given by women is 5.57, which is higher than the average value given by men of 3.83. There are also slight differences between men and women regarding the most itchy areas on the soles of the feet.

The highest scoring area for women was in the center of the arch, while the highest scoring area for men was slightly closer to the toes.

The researchers used this data to 3D print a flexible insole that can be inserted into any ordinary shoe.

It's called TickleFoot and has 3 tickling actuators that hit the highest scoring point on the sole of the foot in all experiments. Powered by a lithium-ion battery, the device can last up to 60 minutes of tickling time and can be turned on and off remotely.

Scientists have previously suggested that tickling may play an evolutionary role in social interaction and bonding. Elvitigala believes TickleFoot could be useful in providing remote social interaction between couples, or as a stress-reducing device.

But Marlies Oostland of University College London, UK, doubts whether tickling can help those in pain. She studied how rats responded to tickling and found that they needed to be in a positive mental state to be "tickled" by it.

Still, she believes that tickling studies in humans could yield new knowledge about the workings of the brain, particularly about predictive coding. In this process, the brain creates a model of a person's environment and uses it to predict sensory input, which is then compared to actual experience to discover surprises.

"I think it's very useful to do studies like this," Oostland said. "The brain uses predictive coding, and a naturalistic way to study it is to study something like tickling, because it's a very uncomfortable For normal behaviors, we actively look for surprises. For any other behavior, we try to minimize surprises because when they happen, it probably means a predator is trying to kill you.

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