Scratch-off tickets are big money for state-run lotteries. Is it the promise of winning big that keeps players in the game? Or is there something else happening in the brain? NOVA is available to ...

Pashun George and her sister grew up scratching their mother’s back before bed. Now, they charge $130 an hour for it. In 2010, they turned the tradition into a family business, Scratcher Girls, the ...

Mosquito bites are itchy and we tend to scratch itchy things. The scratching feels good in the short term but tends to hasten and exacerbate swelling and inflammation. This leads to more scratching ...

But there’s more to scratching than gating in the spinal cord. Deep brain structures stimulated by touch send signals back ...

Scratch-off tickets are big money for state-run lotteries. Is it the promise of winning big that keeps players in the game? Or is there something else happening in the brain?