Abstract
Laughter is a uniquely human behaviour about which we appear to know very little. A recent report of the effects of electrical stimulation of a discrete area on the surface of the left superior frontal gyrus may provide some timely clues. Fried et al., 1998 Fried I. et al. Electric current stimulates laughter. Nature. 1998; 391: 650 Crossref PubMed Scopus (144) Google Scholar found that stimulating a small area of the left frontal lobe of their patient A.K. (who was being treated for chronic, intractable seizures) produced laughter accompanied by sensations of mirth and merriment. The patient attributed her laughter to a variety of external stimuli that were presented during a sequence of tasks such as naming objects, counting and finger-to-thumb apposition, none of which are normally thought to be intrinsically funny. The area that evoked laughter was just anterior to the supplementary motor area (SMA) and was suggested to correspond to the pre-SMA in nonhuman primate studies. While pathological laughter has been documented following lesions in the hypothalamus and temporal lobe, this is not usually associated with the emotional aspects reported in this study. This intriguing finding may therefore have interesting implications for the study of laughter in particular and emotion in general.
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