What is laughter? What roles does it serve? Sophie Scott, a neuroscientist, discusses this serious question with Nigel Warburton for this episode of Mind Bites, a series made in association with Philosophy Bites as part of Nicholas Shea's AHRC-funded Meaning for the Brain and Meaning for the Person project
This is mind Bytes, a series for philosophy bytes with me, David Edmonds, and me, Nigel Warburton.
What did the hippocampus say during its retirement speech?
Thanks for the memories.
It's a neuroscientist joke, but it turns out that even good jokes are not really what makes most of us laugh.
The neuroscientist Sophie Scott has chosen an unusual but intriguing specialism.
She studies laughter.
Sophie Scott, welcome to mind bites.
Hi.
Thank you very much for inviting me.
The topic we're going to focus on is the meaning of laughter.
Just to begin, is laughter universal amongst human beings?
Yes, as far as we can see.
Every human culture, even cultures that might not use laughter very much because it seems impolite, recognize laughter even from people or cultures they've never seen before.
Well, basically, what is it?
It's weird.
It's more like a different way of breathing than it is anything else.
It just involves squeezing air out with these large contractions of the intercostal muscles and the diaphragm.
It's a very basic, very elemental way of making a sound.
It's part of a set of nonverbal expressions of emotion, things like screams of fear or angry growls or yuck sounds.
And they are more like animal calls than they are like speech.