If It Itches, Scratch It

Maybe you're in an important meeting and you don't want to fidget. So you try to ignore it, but the sensation grows - an irritating feeling that gradually occupies more and more of your attention. Finally, you can't take it any longer. You have to scratch the itch.

Scientists have long wondered why pain - for example, from scratching - relieves an itch. They are starting to look at the biological mechanisms that lie behind itching. As they do so, they are finding curious overlaps between itching and that different-seeming sensation, pain.

(via corsinet)