10 Facts About Laughter

Professor Sophie Scott, a neuroscientist and stand-up comic, put together these surprising facts about laughter.

1. Rats Laugh When They’re Tickled
Rats laugh when they’re tickled, and the more they play together, the more they laugh. Psychologist Jack Panksepp first observed laughing rats in the 1990 s; he needed special equipment to hear it, as rats’ laughs are very high pitched.

2. You’re More Likely to Laugh Around Others – Not Because of Jokes
If you're laughing, you're far more likely to be surrounded by others, according to research by laughter expert Dr. Robert Provine. The critical laughter trigger for most people is another person, not a joke or funny movie.

After observing 1,200 people laughing in their natural environments, Dr. Provine and his team found that laughter followed jokes only about 10-20 percent of the time. Social laughter occurs 30 times more frequently than solitary laughter. In most cases, the laughter followed a banal comment or only slightly humorous one, which signals that the person is more important than the material in triggering laughter.

3. Your Brain Can Detect Fake Laughter
Professor Scott’s research has shown that your brain can tell the difference between real or staged laughter. When you hear staged, or deliberate, laughter, it prompts more activity in your brain’s anterior medial prefrontal cortex, which helps you understand other people’s emotions.
This suggests your brain automatically goes to work deciphering why someone is deliberately laughing.

4. Laughter Is Contagious
The saying "laugh and the whole world laughs with you" is more than just an expression: laughter really is contagious. The sound of laughter triggers regions in the premonitory cortical region of your brain, which is involved in moving your facial muscles to correspond with sound and prepare to join in.

5. Jokes Are Funnier if You Know the Comedian
Familiarity is a key part of humor and laughter, and research shows people find jokes told by famous comedians to be funnier than the same joke told by someone they’re not familiar with.

6. Laughing Burns Calories
Laughing raises both your energy expenditure and heart rate by about 10 percent to 20 percent. This means you could burn about 10-40 calories by laughing for 10 to 15 minutes. While this sounds good in theory, you’d have to laugh solidly for an hour or more for this calorie burning to have any meaningful effect.

7. Laughing Is Good for Your Relationships
Research shows that couples who use laughter and smile when discussing a touchy subject feel better in the immediacy and report higher levels of satisfaction in their relationship. They also tend to stay together longer.

8. Laughter Requires Timing
Laughter has a distinctive pattern. It rarely occurs in the middle of a sentence. Instead, laughter tends to occur at the end of sentences or during a break in speech, which suggests language is given the priority. According to Dr. Provine:

"The occurrence of speaker laughter at the end of phrases suggests that a neurologically based process governs the placement of laughter in speech.

Different brain regions are involved in the expression of cognitively oriented speech and the more emotion-laden vocalization of laughter."

Comedians also use the natural tendency for laughter to grow and fade to their advantage, and will leave spaces at the end of a sentence for the audience to fill in with laughter.

9. Laughter Is Attractive
Research by Dr. Provine found that women laugh 126 percent more than men in cross-gender conversations, with men preferring to be the one prompting the laughter.
In a review of more than 3,700 newspaper personal ads, Dr. Provine revealed that women were 62 percent more likely to mention laughter, including seeking a mate with a sense of humor, while men were more likely to offer humor in their ads.

10. Some Things Can Make Virtually Everyone Laugh
While there’s no one joke that makes everyone laugh, Professor Scott found that one of the best tools for making people laugh in her lab is a clip of people trying not to laugh in a situation where it would be highly inappropriate to do so.

Laughter is a primitive reflex common to most animals not just humans

Humans don't have a monopoly on laughter, says Silvia Cardoso. A behavioural biologist at the State University of Campinas, Brazil, she says it's a primitive reflex common to most animals: even rats laugh. She tells Sophie Petit-Zeman that too little laughter could have serious consequences for our mental, physical and social well-being.

Laughter a universal phenomenon, and one of the most common things we do. We laugh many times a day, for many different reasons, but rarely think about it, and seldom consciously control it. We know so little about the different kinds and functions of laughter, and my interest really starts there. Why do we do it? What can laughter teach us about our positive emotions and social behaviour? There's so much we don't know about how the brain contributes to emotion and I think we can get at understanding this by studying laughter.

Only 10 or 20 per cent of laughing is a response to humor. Most of the time it's a message we send to other people--communicating joyful disposition, a willingness to bond and so on. It occupies a special place in social interaction and is a fascinating feature of our biology, with motor, emotional and cognitive components. Scientists study all kinds of emotions and behaviour, but few focus on this most basic ingredient. Laughter gives us a clue that we have powerful systems in our brain which respond to pleasure, happiness and joy. It's also involved in events such as release of fear.

My professional focus has always been on emotional behaviour. I spent many years investigating the neural basis of fear in rats, and came to laughter via that route. When I was working with rats, I noticed that when they were alone, in an exposed environment, they were scared and quite uncomfortable. Back in a cage with others, they seemed much happier. It looked as if they played with one another--real rough-and-tumble--and I wondered whether they were also laughing. The neurobiologist Jaak Panksepp had shown that juvenile rats make short vocalisations, pitched too high for humans to hear, during rough-and-tumble play. He thinks these are similar to laughter. This made me wonder about the roots of laughter.

Benefits of Laughter Yoga

Benefits of Laughter Yoga

Laughter youga provides:

• Greater Flow of oxygen to brain

• More energy

• more motivation

• A connection between participants

• a better quality of life

• a positive state of mind

• a way to alleviate difficulties and challenges

• relief of stress

• strengthening of the immenue system

Science behind laughing theraphy

Laugh - The brain

Neurophysiology indicates that laughter is linked with the activation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, that produces endorphins. Scientists have shown that parts of the limbic system are involved in laughter. This system is involved in emotions and helps us with functions necessary for humans' survival. The structures in the limbic system that are involved in laughter are the hippocampus and the amygdala.

The December 7, 1984, Journal of the American Medical Association describes the neurological causes of laughter as follows:

"Although there is no known 'laugh center' in the brain, its neural mechanism has been the subject of much, albeit inconclusive, speculation. It is evident that its expression depends on neural paths arising in close association with the telencephalic and diencephalic centers concerned with respiration. Wilson considered the mechanism to be in the region of the mesial thalamus, hypothalamus, and subthalamus. Kelly and co-workers, in turn, postulated that the tegmentum near the periaqueductal grey contains the integrating mechanism for emotional expression. Thus, supranuclear pathways, including those from the limbic system that Papez hypothesised to mediate emotional expressions such as laughter, probably come into synaptic relation in the reticular core of the brain stem. So while purely emotional responses such as laughter are mediated by subcortical structures, especially the hypothalamus, and are stereotyped, the cerebral cortex can modulate or suppress them."

Some drugs are well known for their laughter-facilitating properties (e. g. ethanol and cannabis), while the others, like salvinorin A (the active ingredient of Salvia divinorum), can even induce bursts of uncontrollable laughter.

Laughing - Nature

Laughter might be thought of as an audible expression or appearance of excitement, an inward feeling of joy and happiness. It may ensue from jokes, tickling, and other stimuli completely unrelated to psychological state, such as nitrous oxide. One group of researchers speculated that noises from infants as early as 16 days old may be vocal laughing sounds or laughter, however the weight of the evidence supports its appearance at 15 weeks to four months of age.

Laughter researcher Robert Provine (es) said: "Laughter is a mechanism everyone has; laughter is part of universal human vocabulary. There are thousands of languages, hundreds of thousands of dialects, but everyone speaks laughter in pretty much the same way." Babies have the ability to laugh before they ever speak. Children who are born blind and deaf still retain the ability to laugh.

Provine argues that "Laughter is primitive, an unconscious vocalization." Provine argues that it probably is genetic. In a study of the "Giggle Twins", two happy twins who were separated at birth and only reunited 43 years later, Provine reports that "until they met each other, neither of these exceptionally happy ladies had known anyone who laughed as much as they did." They reported this even though they both had been brought together by their adoptive parents, who they indicated were "undemonstrative and dour." He indicates that the twins "inherited some aspects of their laugh sound and pattern, readiness to laugh, and maybe even taste in humor."

Norman Cousins developed a recovery program incorporating megadoses of Vitamin C, along with a positive attitude, love, faith, hope, and laughter induced by Marx Brothers films. "I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep," he reported. "When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to another pain-free interval." Scientists have noted the similarity in forms of laughter induced by tickling among various primates, which suggests that laughter derives from a common origin among primate species.

A very rare neurological condition has been observed whereby the sufferer is unable to laugh out loud, a condition known as aphonogelia.

Do you believe other animals laugh too?

You only have to look at the primates closest to humans to see that laughter is clearly not unique to us. I don't find this too surprising, because we're only one among many social species and there's no reason why we should have a monopoly on laughter as a social tool. The great apes, such as chimpanzees, do something similar to humans. They open their mouths wide, expose their teeth, retract the corners of their lips, and make loud and repetitive vocalisations in situations that tend to evoke human laughter, like when playing with one another or with humans, or when tickled. Laughter may even have evolved long before primates. We know that dogs at play have strange patterns of exhalation that differ from other sounds made during passive or aggressive confrontation.

But I think we need to be careful about over-interpreting panting behaviour in animals at play. It's nice to think of it as homologous to human laughter, but it could just be something similar but with entirely different purposes and evolutionary advantages.

Everything humans do has a function, and laughing is no exception. Its function is surely communication. We need to build social structures in order to live well in our society and evolution has selected laughter as a useful device for promoting social communication. In other words, it must have a survival advantage for the species.

What is Laughter?

Laughter is a physical reaction in humans and some other species of primate, consisting typically of rhythmical, often audible contractions of the diaphragm and other parts of the respiratory system. It is a response to certain external or internal stimuli. 

Laughter can arise from such activities as being tickled, or from humorous stories or thoughts. Most commonly, it is considered a visual expression of a number of positive emotional states, such as joy, mirth, happiness, relief, etc. On some occasions, however, it may be caused by contrary emotional states such as embarrassment, apology, or confusion such as nervous laughter or courtesy laugh. Age, gender, education, language, and culture are all factors as to whether a person will experience laughter in a given situation.

Laughing, smiling, happiness, feel good 

Laughter is a part of human behaviour regulated by the brain, helping humans clarify their intentions in social interaction and providing an emotional context to conversations. Laughter is used as a signal for being part of a group it signals acceptance and positive interactions with others. 

Laughter is sometimes seen as contagious, and the laughter of one person can itself provoke laughter from others as a positive feedback. This may account in part for the popularity of laugh tracks in situation comedy television shows.

The study of humour and laughter, and its psychological and physiological effects on the human body, is called gelotology.

Is it true that laughing can make us healthier?

It's undoubtedly the best medicine. For one thing, it's exercise. It activates the cardiovascular system, so heart rate and blood pressure increase, then the arteries dilate, causing blood pressure to fall again. Repeated short, strong contractions of the chest muscles, diaphragm and abdomen increase blood flow into our internal organs, and forced respiration--the ha! ha!--makes sure that this blood is well oxygenated. Muscle tension decreases, and indeed we may temporarily lose control of our limbs, as in the expression "weak with laughter". It may also release brain endorphins, reducing sensitivity to pain and boosting endurance and pleasurable sensations. Some studies suggest that laughter affects the immune system by reducing the production of hormones associated with stress, and that when you laugh the immune system produces more T-cells. But no rigorously controlled studies have confirmed these effects. Laughter's social role is definitely important. I'm very concerned that today's children may be heading for a whole lot of social ills because their play and leisure time is so isolated and they lose out on lots of chances for laughter.

When children stare at computer screens, rather than laughing with each other, this is at odds with what's natural for them. Natural social behaviour in children is playful behaviour, and in such situations laughter indicates that make-believe aggression is just fun, not for real, and this is an important way in which children form positive emotional bonds, gain new social skills and generally start to move from childhood to adulthood. I think parents need to be very careful to ensure that their children play in groups, with both peers and adults, and laugh more.

Does laughter differ between the sexes?

I'm sure it does, particularly the uses to which the sexes put laughter as a social tool. For instance, women smile more than laugh, and are particularly adept at smiling and laughing with men as a kind of "social lubricant". It might even be possible that this has a biological origin, because women don't or can't use their physical size as a threat, which men do, even if unconsciously.

And between cultures?

Cultural differences are certainly part of it. Loud, raucous laughter with exaggerated movements and expressions is considered "unfeminine" in most cultures, and is much more common among men, particularly if they're with other men. In several situations I see laughter used, apparently unconsciously, to help get things as diverse as power, friendship, a lover or truthful behaviour from subordinates. For instance, socially dominant individuals, from bosses to tribal chiefs, use laughter to control their subordinates. When the boss laughs, their minions laugh too. Laughter might be a form of asserting power by controlling the emotional climate of the group, and it also has a dark side. There are theories that laughter and aggression have common origins, with some kinds of laughter in primates apparently being threatening--just look at the way they bare their teeth. That might explain why being laughed at is so unpleasant.

How is laughter different in people who are blind or deaf?

The groundbreaking study in this area was conducted by the human ethologist Irenaus Eibl-Eibsfeldt. He found that laughter and crying patterns are well-developed in such children. He concluded that these expressions evolved through natural selection. Deaf children have different sound patterns in their laughter, as they have in speech. Blind children seem not to display all the facial components of laughter. We're going to study these differences by statistically analysing the minute variations in laughter between different types of people. We'll video their faces while they laugh in response to various stimuli. Then we'll analyse every millisecond of their facial behaviour and vocalisation.