Our research focuses on understanding how we perceive touch (somatosensation) and tickle (gargalesis). We want to know why we perceive touch that is produced by our own movements different from the touch of other people, and how the brain best supports this distinction. We are particularly interested in understanding what makes touch ticklish and why our brain does not allow to tickle ourselves. To answer our questions, we perform behavioral and neuroimaging experiments with healthy participants.
We are based at the Donders Institute and the Karolinska Institute and we are funded by the ERC Starting Grant and the starting grant of the Swedish Research Council respectively.