Why do we laugh?

From the brain’s point of view, what is humor? When something is funny, why do we breathe in and out rapidly? Do other animals laugh? Why do most jokes come in threes? What do mystery novelists, magicians, and comedians have in common? Could AI be truly funny? Join Eagleman this week to appreciate the tens of reasons and millions of years behind the tickling of your neural pathways.

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More Information:

McGraw AP, Warren C. Benign violations: Making immoral behavior funny. Psychological science. 2010 Aug;21(8):1141-9.

Warren C, McGraw AP. What makes things humorous. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2015 Jun 9;112(23):7105-6.

Ramachandran VS. The neurology and evolution of humor, laughter, and smiling: the false alarm theory. Medical hypotheses. 1998 Oct 1;51(4):351-4.

Martin RA, Ford T. The psychology of humor: An integrative approach. Academic press; 2018 Jul 14.

NPR. (2021, May 22). Dozens of animals laugh too, study shows. NPR.

Adolescent gorilla being tickled (Cell Press)

Chain L, Caruso C. Eavesdrop on ultrasonic rat giggles [Internet]. Scientific American; 2016.

Coupé, C., Oh, Y.M., Dediu, D. and Pellegrino, F., 2019. Different languages, similar encoding efficiency: Comparable information rates across the human communicative niche. Science advances, 5(9), p.eaaw2594.

Panksepp J, Burgdorf J. 50-kHz chirping (laughter?) in response to conditioned and unconditioned tickle-induced reward in rats: effects of social housing and genetic variables. Behavioural brain research. 2000 Oct 1;115(1):25-38.

Panksepp J, Burgdorf J. “Laughing” rats and the evolutionary antecedents of human joy?. Physiology & behavior. 2003 Aug 1;79(3):533-47.

Hurley MM, Dennett DC, Adams Jr RB. Inside jokes: Using humor to reverse-engineer the mind. MIT press; 2013 Feb 8.

McGraw AP, Warren C, Williams LE, Leonard B. Too close for comfort, or too far to care? Finding humor in distant tragedies and close mishaps. Psychological science. 2012 Oct;23(10):1215-23.

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