The article "Tickling Laughter Produces Different Brain Response To Social Laughter" is about a study recently conducted in Germany. 18 subjects listened to different types of laughter: joyous, taunting, and tickling laughter. They used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to look at brain patterns that occur. Joyous and taunting laughter, also called "complex social laughter", activated the same part of the brain, the part that is linked to processing social information. However, tickling laughter activated parts of the brain associated with processing acoustic complexity.
This means that tickling laughter probably creates more complex sounds than other laughter.
NOS themes: Science is based on evidence, the fMRI shows the parts of the brain being used.
role of Motivation and curiosity: This may be the first investigation to look at nonverbal vocal cues
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/260345.php
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/260345.php
This is really interesting, I had no idea that there are different types of laughs that were so distinguishable! It is funny that our brains recognize different laughs such as social or acoustic without us having to think about it. Here is another really cool article about laughter:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200011/the-science-laughter. It asks a lot of good questions such as why do we laugh at the right time without knowing why?