“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.” –Victor Borges
Aristotle posed that laughter is what sets humans apart from other species. Think about it. We love to laugh—at jokes, movies, at each other. We laugh to ease tension, because others are laughing, or simply just because. All right, Aristotle may not have been completely accurate in his theory (given that other species like rats have been discovered to laugh), but there’s something embedded in the human spirit that thrives off of giggles, chortles, and chuckles.
“Scientists have also found a neural signature for laughter – when you hear a laugh you activate the same brain regions that you would use to move your own face into a smile. These ‘mirror’ responses to laughter reflect the fact that when we hear someone laugh, we are primed to join in (even during a brain scan, which is not very amusing!).” –Science Live 2012, Laughing Brains
I present to you The Laughter Project. The Royal Society has put together a playlist of different laughs that you can listen to. The tricky part is that some are real and some are fake. See if you can guess which laugh is real and which is posed. The results will help researchers at the University College of London learn how people react to different sounds.
Professor Sophie Scott, Chair of Cognitive Neuroscience, talks about laughter.
This project is part of the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition, which showcases a plethora of exhibits ranging from animal vision to epigenetics to robotic soccer. If you love the Laughter Project, you’ll also want to check out Musical Moods, where you can listen to various songs and decide which mood it best conveys.
Photo: Library of Congress
