A beautiful piece of music, a touching love scene on screen or a gripping sporting contest are all capable of causing the goose pimples - or goose bumps or goose flesh - that everyone has experienced.

Christian Kaernbach, professor of psychology in the northern German city of Kiel, and his team have been attempting to find out what is behind the phenomenon, known as piloerection in the literature.

For this they have developed new methods for researching and measuring...read more here: Goose bumps investigated