RESEARCH LINE 1: how action affects SOMatosensation

Since the early 70s, several studies have shown that self-generated touch – as when touching our hand with the other– systematically feels less intense, less pleasant and less ticklish than touch generated by another person or machine. Computational theories of motor control suggest that this is because our brain predicts the sensory consequences of our actions using information from the motor command. For example, when we move to touch our hand with the other, our brain predicts how we will feel before completing the movement and use this prediction signal to suppress the expected sensations.

One of the main research goals in our lab is to understand better this somatosensory attenuation phenomenon: when does it occur and what spatial and temporal conditions need to be fulfilled? How does the brain compute, maintain and update these predictions and what is their neurobiological basis? Are these predictions altered in clinical populations?

We use behavioral (psychophysics and kinematics), physiological (electromyography), computational and neuroimaging methods (functional magnetic resonance, magnetoencephalography) to address our questions.

Main funding source: Swedish Research Council

RESEARCH LINE 2: WHat is the basic Neuroscience of GARGALESIS

Tickle is one of the most enigmatic human sensations: we do not know how a touch can turn into tickle, and why our brain responds to other people’s tickles but not to our own. To date, there is no theory that can satisfactorily explain why touch on certain body areas feels more ticklish than on others, and why some people are more prone to be tickled compared to others. Despite this fundamental knowledge gap, experiments on tickle perception have been extremely scarce.

We take a new interdisciplinary data-driven approach to understand the neuroscience of human tickle perception, based on modern haptic technology, somatosensory psychophysics, physiology, kinematics, neuroimaging, and brain stimulation.

Main funding source: European Research Council and Dutch Research Council