The Neuroscience of Being Human
The Neuroscience of Laughter
Published for World Laughter Day. What brain science reveals about the evolutionary origins, neural circuitry, endorphin release, immune effects and social binding power of one of the oldest and least understood behaviours in the human repertoire
2,010-word article with 16 Harvard references.
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Laughter is older than language, older than the species, and almost certainly older than humour. It is a stereotyped vocalisation produced by a brainstem circuit that humans share with the great apes, and it does measurable work in the body, releasing endogenous opioids, raising pain thresholds, modulating cardiovascular tone, lowering circulating cortisol and synchronising the brains of people sharing the moment. This fully referenced article, published for World Laughter Day, sets out what laughter is neurologically, why the Duchenne (genuine) and non-Duchenne (volitional) forms travel through different circuits, what Robin Dunbar's group has shown about the endorphin system, what Lee Berk and colleagues have shown about the immune signal, and what the Laughter Yoga movement founded in Mumbai in 1995 has accidentally tested at population scale.
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