Your Brain on Laughter

In contrast, seeing facial expressions (even if you are just imagining them when you are listening to laughter) might be more important in recognizing joy. Jaak Panksepp, professor of integrative physiology and neuroscience at Washington State University and a leading researcher on laughter, who was not associated with the study, called it “wonderful.” He says, “It is remarkable that joyful and taunting laughter could not be observed with traditional blood-flow measures but could by more modern connectivity analyses that tell us how quite different brain regions are working together when listening to various kinds of laughter.”