Monday, December 24, 2012

'Contagious itching' more common among neurotics | Reduction

'Contagious itching' more common among neurotics

A brain - I has it
A brain - I has it by everyone's idle
License (according to Flickr): Attribution-ShareAlike License
Excerpt:

Watching another person scratch an itch can cause you to do the same, and scientists have figured out the basis of this peculiar "itch contagion." It's all in your brain. Merely seeing someone else scratch activates brain centers involved in the itch response, suggesting the observation makes one itchy. But this response doesn't apply to everyone. Those study participants who were  more neurotic  (a tendency toward negative emotions) were more likely to experience itch contagion. Surprisingly, the researchers found  empathy  (a willingness to take another's viewpoint) did not correlate with the phenomenon. "Itching has a pleasurable aspect to it, it's a double-edged sword so to speak. On the one hand, it's unpleasant; if you start scratching it is also rewarding at the same time.

People:

Henning Holle

Overall Sentiment: -0.100813

Relevance: 0.866824

SentimentQuote
0"We would expect to see activity in memory-driven areas such as the hippocampus, for instance, which we did not find," Holle said. ...
-0.0198165"Itching has a pleasurable aspect  to it, it's a double-edged sword so to speak. On the one hand, it's unpleasant; if you start scratching it is also rewarding at the same time. That is what I find interesting about it, and that's why I really want to do more research on it," Holle said. ...
Sentiment Stats:
  • Number of Quotes: 2
  • Aggregate Sentiment: -0.0198165
  • Mean: -0.00990825
  • Standard Deviation: 1.7320508075689

Gil Yosipovitch

Overall Sentiment: -0.0712463

Relevance: 0.37947

SentimentQuote
-0.0276563"It's a very nice study, it complements some of our previous observations, and it clearly demonstrates a brain mechanism that [is] involved in this behavior," Gil Yosipovitch, a dermatologist at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center who studies itch contagion, told ...
-0.11127"Even animals that are less intellectually sophisticated — monkeys are to be compared to little babies — they were able to behave similarly," said Yosipovitch, ...
0.0945379"I wouldn't be surprised that other areas involved in cognitive aspects and memory would be highly involved," Yosipovitch wrote ...
-0.118739"I wouldn't be surprised that other areas involved in cognitive aspects and memory would be highly involved," Yosipovitch wrote in an email. "There are possibly other explanations for this mechanism, to put the eggs all in the basket of neuroticism (negative feelings), I'm not so sure."
Sentiment Stats:
  • Number of Quotes: 4
  • Aggregate Sentiment: -0.1631274
  • Mean: -0.04078185
  • Standard Deviation: 1.4142135623731

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Additional Info:

Organization: University of Sussex

Overall Sentiment: -0.0123863

Relevance: 0.323292

HealthCondition: itch

Overall Sentiment: 0.0514811

Relevance: 0.776114

Disambiguation: DiseaseOrMedicalCondition | Symptom | DiseaseReferences:
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