Though you might think of laughter as a human phenomenon always associated with humor, such as the punchline of a joke, laughter does not require much in the way of cognitive complexity. Human laughter is rooted in the ancient PLAY system that generates pure joyful social engagement. Jaak Panksepp discovered that rats, too, play and emit sounds of laughter.
Primal Laughter
Around the time I studied psychology from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, none of my professors believed rats shared basic emotions with us. Panksepp, though, believed all mammals share basic emotions with us. He discovered that when he tickled rats they laughed and this laughter originates deep in the midbrain so that in rats and other mammals share primal laughter that originates outside of conscious control.
The laughter of rats is ultrasonic, so Panksepp used special recording equipment that transcribed the laughter within our range of hearing. If you tickle chimpanzees, though, they laugh in an audible breathy way that is readily recognizable to us, and some humans laugh in very much the same way.
Laughter serves a social purpose and it does so even in rats. When experimenters cut the vocal cords of rats so that they could not laugh audibly, they would often get attacked. This likely is because much of their rough-and-tumble play is similar to aggression. So when they don’t laugh, other rats may interpret the play as an attack.
Social Laughter
Neuroscientist Sophie Scott picks up where Panksepp leaves off. She focuses on the social aspect of laughter. In fact, she says most of the laughter we produce is purely social in its origins. We laugh to maintain a bond with the person we are talking with. And we laugh more when we are with a person we like. And we laugh when we are with others much more than we laugh when we are alone, thirty times more. That is why laugh tracts are put into sitcoms. It signals us when to laugh. Otherwise, we might not find it funny at all sitting there by ourselves.
There is something unbelievably powerful how laughter can overwhelm you. When it does, you may laugh in an unflattering way. That is real laughter. But if you ask someone to think of someone who has inappropriate laughter, Scott says it will always be someone they don’t like. There is nothing inappropriate about their laughter, you just don’t like them. And she says we do the opposite as well. People will say people who make them laugh are hilarious and have a great sense of humor. What we mean is I really like them and I laugh when I’m around them so that they will know that I like them and maybe they’ll like me too. But we attribute our laughter to other people and our lack of laughter to other people.”
VTA
Primal Laughter
Spontaneous laughter originates deep in the subcortical midbrain in what is sometimes called the feel-good area, the ventral tegmental area commonly referred to as the VTA.
Neuroscientist Kamran Khodakhah of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City uses a method called optogenetics to control the activity of cerebellar nerve cells that send messages to the VTA. Activating the VTA cells with lasers made mice feel good. When the mice learn that the VTA cells activate only when they are in a certain spot, they spend more time in that spot.
VTA cells send a feel-good signal turned on by social interactions. His team found that VTA cells were active when mice were in contact with a companion. When the researchers artificially turned these VTA cells off using lasers, mice no longer preferred to hang out with a fellow mouse over an empty room.”
A Troubling Memory
Now I understand something that happened about forty years ago. I was riding in the back of a large van with a few teachers from the school I worked at during my employment with Department of Dependent Overseas Schools in Japan. We were headed from the Zama Headquarter Army Post to the Shinjuku area of Tokyo where I would take them to my favorite coffee shop haunts.
“Stop your cackling Dames!” the teacher driving the van loudly commanded me.
Yikes! That cackling was my primal laughter. Thinking I was among friends, it naturally came out. But his critique shocked me back into my shell. You had to be macho for him to accept you. My cackling laughter was far from macho.
Should I continue like this, though, I’ll wander the labyrinth of rumination and paradox. So I’m going to do Ki Breathing and Insight Meditation and let go of the thought that my wife virtually never laughs at my jokes.
Self-help books that help:
Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus
The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body
