An EEG-mapping study of "laughing": coherence and brain dominances

The human expressive behavior termed laughter is triggered by pleasurable psychoemotional stimuli (Moody, 1978) and is possessed of a certain healing potential. According to split-brain studies (Sperry, 1966), psychoemotional stimuli are bound up with emotional activity in the right side of the brain. The idea thus suggests itself to study laughter generated by different sources with regard to the attendant electric brain activity between the right and left hemispheres. The present study was undertaken first with subjects in a state of normal consciousness and subsequently-given the possibility of increased affect stimulation in connection with laughter-under hypnosis. Having familiarized ourselves in our earlier work on brain dominances with the brain mapping EEG and having convinced ourselves of its greater efficiency in comparison with conventional EEG (Bick, 1985), we have had recourse to this method in the present study on approaches to the neurophysiological processes in the brain connected with laughter.