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Seeing others scratch can trigger your own itch

Seeing other people scratching can cause your brain to trigger your own.

Seeing others scratch can trigger your own itch

Seeing other people scratching can cause your brain to trigger your own.

Patients who suffer from chronic itch employ creative techniques to alleviate their itch, often using painful thermal stimuli, such as hot and very cold showers, as well as mechanical stimuli, such as scratching. Although it's a well-known sensation and dermatologists often feel itchy after seeing their patients scratch, contagious itch has not been studied systematically at all.

To examine the causes of what's known as "contagious itch,"  seeing others itch propels one to itch, researchers in America asked 25 volunteers to watch a series of five minute video clips that either showed people scratching their left forearm or sitting idly. They were either given a solution of histamine to induce itching on a patch of their skin or a few drops of harmless salt solution. The study monitored 14 healthy volunteers who had histamine or a placebo applied to their forearm and 11 people with atopic dermatitis (a type of eczema) as they watched short video clips.

The researchers found that the sensation of an itch can be caught visually in the same way as yawning and simply watching a video of someone else scratching was enough to induce and intensify itching in volunteers. The sensation occurred both in healthy volunteers and patients who suffered from atopic dermatitis. Even when they were given a few drops of a liquid designed to induce itching on a patch of their skin, the volunteers tended to scratch more on random parts of their body. The participants with eczema had a higher itch intensity and scratched more often while watching the videos of other people scratching, compared to the volunteers without eczema.

The researchers hypothesised that itching becomes contagious because the brain becomes hypersensitive when someone nearby scratches and so misinterprets any kind of physical sensation on our skin as an itch. It is conceivable that the neuronal networks or mechanisms underlying contagious itching may be similar to the ones involved in contagious yawning. There must be a central brain mechanism responsible for the generation of the itch sensation in the absence of itch stimuli and it is possible that sensory inputs from various regions, not specifically related to itch, may be wrongfully interpreted as being "itchy".

The study findings show how much influence the mind can have on physical sensations. The researchers conclude that if we can understand the underlying mechanism and its cause, we should have a better chance to treat itch, targeting the central nervous system stations involved.
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