Where: direction of the stroke on your palm
When: position of the foam over time
what your brain predictswhat the skin feels
How ticklish it feels–
mutedlike someone else's touch
A sketch of the 1999 robot experiment. The foam moves back and forth twice a second, as in the study; the top animation runs four times slower so you can follow it. The thin line joining the two dots is the prediction error. The meter follows the direction of the published results, not exact ratings: ticklishness rises with delay (levelling off beyond about 200 ms) and with rotation.