Previous
data has indicated that each kind of laughter conveys a wealth of auditory and
social information.
These
different kinds of laughter also spark different connections within the
"laughter perception network" in the human brain depending on their context,
according to research published May 8 in the open access journal PLOS ONE
by Dirk Wildgruber and colleagues from the University of Tuebingen, Germany.
Laughter in animals is a form of social bonding based on a primordial
reflex to tickling, but human laughter has come a long way from these playful
roots. Though many people laugh when they're tickled, 'social laughter' in
humans can be used to communicate happiness, taunts or other conscious messages
to peers. Here, researchers studied participants' neural responses as they
listened to three kinds of laughter: joy, taunt and tickling. "Laughing
at someone and laughing with someone leads to different social consequences,"
says Wildgruber. "Specific cerebral connectivity patterns during perception of
these different types of laughter presumably reflect modulation of attentional
mechanisms and processing resources. The researchers found that brain
regions sensitive to processing more complex social information were activated
when people heard joyous or taunting laughter, but not when they heard the
'tickling laughter'. However, 'tickling laughter' is more complex than the other
types at the acoustic level, and consequently activated brain regions sensitive
to this higher degree of acoustic complexity. These dynamic changes activated
and connected different regions depending on the kind of laughter participants
heard. Patterns of brain connectivity can impact cognitive function in health
and disease. Though some previous research has examined how speech can influence
these patterns, this study is among the first few to examine non-verbal vocal
cues like laughter.
Source: PLOS ONE
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