Laughter

Background: Myelomeningocele or spina bifida is an open neural tube defect that is characterized by protrusion of the meninges and the spinal cord through a deformity in the vertebral arch and spinous process. Myelomeningocele of post-natal tissue is well described; however, pre-natal tissue of this defect has no known previous histologic characterization. We compared the histology of different forms of pre-natal myelomeningocele and post-natal myelomeningocele tissue obtained via prenatal intrauterine and postnatal surgical repairs...

Tickling is commonly perceived as juvenile play associated with laughter. However, its potential connection to adult sexual behavior has largely remained unexplored. Our online survey, primarily distributed among individuals interested in tickle fetishism, explored tickling and its association with sexual behavior. Ticklishness types, tools, preferred body parts, and partner preferences, were examined. Results revealed diverse patterns of ticklishness changes over time and distinct body-part preferences for different types of tickling...

Former United States President Ronald Reagan's use of media and his charismatic connection with viewers earned him the moniker "the great communicator". One aspect of his charisma, the influence of elicited laughter, during a highly critical 5-minute news story by CBS reporter Leslie Stahl during the 1984 US presidential election is examined here. Two experiments examining the effects of audience laughter on perceptions of charismatic leadership are reported. In the first experiment the effects of audience laughter in response to Reagan's comments were investigated...

In this hypothesis, I discuss how laughter from physical play could have evolved to being induced via visual or even verbal stimuli, and serves as a signal to highlight incongruity that could potentially pose a threat to survival. I suggest how laughter's induction could have negated the need for physical contact in play, evolving from its use in tickling, to tickle-misses, and to taunting, and I discuss how the application of deep learning neural networks trained on images of spectra of a variety of laughter types from a variety of individuals or even species, could be used to determine such evolutionary pathways via the use of latent space exploration...

INTRODUCTION: Emotional contagion is achieved by inferring and emotionally resonating with other persons' feelings. It is unclear whether age-related changes in emotional contagion for infant sounds are modulated by the experience of childbirth or childcare. This study aims to evaluate changes in inference and emotional resonance for positive and negative infant sounds (laughter and crying) among women, based on age and parous experience. METHODS: A total of 241 women (60 young nulliparous, 60 young parous, 60 old nulliparous, and 61 old parous) completed a web-based questionnaire...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

OBJECTIVES: Family involvement in the lives of people who have dementia and live in long-term care is important, but family members may face challenges communicating and connecting with their loved one as dementia progresses. A type of therapeutic humor (Laughter Care) delivered by trained specialists aims to engage people with dementia who reside in long-term care through creative play and laughter. This study aimed to explore the perceptions of Laughter Care Specialists (LCSs) regarding families' engagement with the program...

Individuals grappling with chronic ailments often undergo a deterioration in their overall quality of life (QoL), encompassing psychological, social, and physical dimensions of well-being. Acknowledging that humor has demonstrated the potential to engender favorable effects on QoL, this systematic review endeavors to investigate the correlation between humor and QoL among adults contending with chronic health conditions. A comprehensive review of quantitative data was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines...

AIM: To investigate the potential effectiveness of "medical clowns" on preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative anxiety of children undergoing various dental treatments and also its effect on the operator's stress levels in a dental setup. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 170 pediatric patients, aged 4-8 years, indicated for preventive therapy, extractions, restorative, and endodontics were included and divided into two groups [group I-audiovisual (A-V) aids; group II-medical clowns], group of 85 patients each after recording Modified yale preoperative scale...

CONTEXT: Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is associated with a group of emotional, behavioral, and somatic symptoms that occur during the menstrual cycle. Laughter yoga involves a combination of laughter exercises and breathing techniques derived from more traditional yoga practice. No previous studies have examined the effects of laughter yoga on the symptoms of PMS. OBJECTIVE: The study intended to assess the effectiveness of laughter yoga in coping with the premenstrual symptoms of women...

Although emotional mimicry is ubiquitous in social interactions, its mechanisms and roles remain disputed. A prevalent view is that imitating others' expressions facilitates emotional understanding, but the evidence is mixed and almost entirely based on facial emotions. In a preregistered study, we asked whether inhibiting orofacial mimicry affects authenticity perception in vocal emotions. Participants listened to authentic and posed laughs and cries, while holding a pen between the teeth and lips to inhibit orofacial responses ( n = 75), or while responding freely without a pen ( n = 75)...

Background: There are numerous difficulties that nursing students must overcome in the nursing practice environment. This circumstance mainly impacts the happiness and stress levels of nursing students who lack clinical practice. Aim: In this study aimed to examine the effect of laughter yoga (LY) on nursing students' happiness and stress levels attending to clinical practice for the first-time. Method: In this randomized controlled trial, a totally 50 nursing students were included from a nursing school in Turkey...

Fernando A. Silveira had the unique combination of being a sagacious scientist and a remarkable human being. Throughout his career, he made significant contributions to understanding bee diversity and keenly spread this scientific information to the academic community at large and beyond the university walls. His rich character, warm heart, strong voice and laughter are missed by those privileged to be Fernandos students, friends, mentors, and family. In this volume, we honor Fernando A. Silveira, who prematurely passed away at the age of 62, leaving three sons, his wife, and numerous friends...

Infants are born into rich social networks and are faced with the challenge of learning about them. When infants observe social interactions, they make predictions about future behavior, but it is not clear whether these predictions are based on social dispositions, social relationships, or both. The current studies (N = 188, N = 90 males) address this question in 12-month-old infants and 16- to 18-month-old toddlers who observe social interactions involving imitation. In Studies 1 and 3, infants and toddlers expected that imitators, compared to non-imitators, would respond to their social partners' distress...

Gymnopilus orientispectabilis, also known as "big laughter mushroom," is a hallucinogenic poisonous mushroom that causes excessive laughter upon ingestion. From the fruiting bodies of G. orientispectabilis, eight lanostane-type triterpenoids (1-8), including seven novel compounds: gymnojunols A-G (2-8), were isolated. The chemical structures of these new compounds (2-8) were determined by analyzing their 1D and 2D NMR spectra and HR-EISMS, and their absolute configurations were unambiguously assigned by quantum chemical ECD calculations and a computational method coupled with a statistical procedure (DP4+)...

We present a questionnaire exploring everyday laughter experience. We developed a 30-item questionnaire in English and collected data on an English-speaking sample (N = 823). Based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA), we identified four dimensions which accounted for variations in people's experiences of laughter: laughter frequency ('Frequency'), social usage of laughter ('Usage'), understanding of other people's laughter ('Understanding'), and feelings towards laughter ('Liking'). Reliability and validity of the LPPQ were assessed...

Background Asthma represents one of the most common diseases in childhood, with a prevalence ranging between 9% and 13% in Portugal. Therefore, it holds significant importance in pediatric health. While existing studies have shed light on asthma in the Portuguese population, they have predominantly concentrated on urban centers, with the population of Alto Minho remaining underrepresented in the literature. This study aims to understand the main factors of exposure, exacerbation, and the most prevalent allergens in a pediatric sample from the Alto Minho Local Health Unit, Portugal...

BACKGROUND: Nitrous oxide has been an integral part of surgical anesthesia for many years in the developed world and is still used in developing countries such as India. The other main concerns in low-resource countries are the lack of an advanced anesthesia gas-scavenging system and modular surgical theatres. As a greenhouse gas that has been present in the atmosphere for more than 100 years and damages the ozone layer, nitrous oxide is three times worse than sevoflurane. Here, we conducted an observational study to quantify the annual nitrous oxide consumption and its environmental impact in terms of carbon dioxide equivalence in one of busiest tertiary health care and research centers in Northern India...

Treatment of motor disorders by MRI-guided focused ultrasound is an alternative to neuro- and radiosurgery such as stereotactic radiofrequency ablation and thalamotomy with a gamma knife. However, safety, efficacy and feasibility of this technology for intracranial neoplasms are still unclear. The authors report successful hypothalamic hamartoma dissection by MRI-guided focused ultrasound in a 32-year-old woman with drug-resistant gelastic epilepsy and violent laughter and crying attacks. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed type II hypothalamic hamartoma...

Laughter conveys a wide range of information relevant for social interaction. In previous research we have shown that laughter can convey information about the sender's emotional state, however other research did not find such an effect. This paper aims to replicate our previous study using participant samples of diverse cultural backgrounds. 161 participants from Poland, the UK, India, Hong Kong, and other countries classified 121 spontaneously emitted German laughter sounds according to the laughter type, i...