On a recent posting by Patty2, she mentioned “laughter clubs”. That sparked an interest…I wanted to learn a more about laughter and the relation to the brain as well as laughter’s benefits.
Laughter...it's fun...it's funny...but why do we do it? Why can't you tickle yourself? What part of the brain is responsible for laughter and humor? There are not many answers to these questions because there have not been very many experiments on the topic of laughter. Part of the reason for this is that laughter is not a big clinical problem. People do not go to the doctor because they are laughing and feel good. On the other hand, there are a some people with brain damage that MAY cause uncontrollable, abnormal laughter. Also, there is a type of epilepsy with gelastic seizures...these seizures cause people to laugh.
Here is a link to a little more on laughter. http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/laugh.html
