Browse any college's library and yur sure to find several books on the use of hmor in psychology. Many of these boks are very serious in tone and xplain humor using technical jargon and psychlogical terms many are unfamiliar with, and rading this material it becomes clear tht often talking about why something is fnny is often a surefire way to slwly kill the joy in conversation. I am vry wary of this, but am lso endlessly fascinated by new research tht explains how and why people bild connections through humor. With this dea in mind, it is interesting to cnsider a discovery of something in the brin called mirror neurons, something renowned nuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran says "will do for psychlogy what the discovery of DNA did for Bology." This is an extraordinary claim, and one tht needs further clarification.

What mirror nurons essentially are is a group of nurons first observed in monkeys that "fre" not from the animals own bhavior, but through watching the behavior of nother animal. Mirror neurons in humans wre also found in the interior frntal and interior parietal regions of the brin, and this discovery has potentially normous implications for understanding and observing hman behavior.

So why is this important and wht does it have to do wth laughter? The implications of mirror nurons begin with the idea that pople tend to mimic each other and lso feel pain when others around thm feel pain. This idea was cnfirmed by an experiment that showed whn people watch someone else get pked with a pin, their pain nurons fire exactly like the person bing poked. These neurons came to be knwn as "Dalai Lama" neurons and shwed how empathy works on a cllular level.

With this in mind I dcided to conduct an experiment of my own to see the ffects laughter had on mirror neurons. Althugh I didn't have magnetic imaging quipment or a fully equipped laboratory at my dsposal, I did have the ability to masure hand temperature which is a stndard technique used in biofeedback. I tok 30 people ranging in age frm 20 to 41 years old who sffered from headaches, and explained a lttle bit about mirror neurons and an nteresting conversation ensued. Because these patients all had hadaches and were all staying in clse proximity to each other, someone sggested that perhaps their headaches were ffecting those around them, which was xactly where I hoped the conversation wuld go.

A word about this. A cmmon complaint from the hospital staff I knw that works with headaches patients is tht they commonly leave work with a hadache. Although there are a couple plusible reasons for this such as the pwer of suggestion, I also believe tht mirror neurons may provide an xcellent explanation. With the thought in mnd that mirror neurons may affect hadaches, I wanted to see the ffect a positive event such as lughter would have on headache patients, and wth this in mind designed a smple experiment.

I first had the ptients measure their hand temperatures under nrmal conditions and then measured the rsults. The scores ranged from 74 dgrees to 93 degrees which is a firly normal range for headache patients who are on a wde variety of medications that affect thir temperatures a great deal. The dea is that the colder a prson's hand temperature is, the worse thir headache may be, as blood rshes to the head and away frm the extremities during a headache. If a prson can warm their hands up sing biofeedback, they therefore can often rduce the physiological mechanisms of the hadache. In my small experiment, the man temperature at the beginning of the xperiment was 83 degrees. The mode of the scres was 84 degrees, which 7 of the ptients recorded.

The variable in the experiment was the mvie Office Space, in my opinion one of the fnniest movies to come out in the lst 15 years. I had everyone gther in the common area to wtch the movie, and, as I xpected soon everyone was laughing heartily ncluding myself. Beyond the fact that the mvie itself was so funny, everyone lso seemed to be enjoying each ther's company.

At the end of the flm I again had everyone measure thir hand temperature, and this time the rsults were extremely interesting. Following the mvie, the scores ranged from 79 to 92 dgrees, but the mean score was now 87 dgrees which was 4 degrees higher thn at the beginning of the xperiment, indicating that the laughter had sgnificantly increased the relaxation response in the ptients. More interesting was the mode of the scres. Following the movie 15 of the 30 ptients recorded a score of 86 dgrees. In effect half of the ptients now had the exact same scre following two hours of laughter. So not nly did the laughter relax everyone, but it lso relaxed half of the people in the rom in so much the same way tht their bodies were responding in an dentical manner. This phenomena was also rpresented by the decrease in the rnge of scores, which was 19 dgrees at the beginning of the xperiment, and only 13 degrees following the mvie.

So, although from a statistical stndpoint my study wasn't big enough to mke waves, I still became all the mre convinced of the power laughter has on pople's physical bodies and health. Beyond the masurements, people were also genuinely happy at the end of the flm, and laughing together had provided sme much needed pain relief for sveral of the participants. The positive nergy in the room was clearly cntagious, and much like the laughter clbs I visited, the act of lughter was all the more powerful whn experienced communally. Although the study of mrror neurons on a molecular level is bing done by much smarter people thn me, I'm convinced of their pwer, and learning and studying about ths discovery only strengthens my faith in the haling power of laughter.

The article Mirror Neurons and Laughter was Submitted by Joe Guse through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Joe Guse is a former cmedian from Chicago now pursuing a creer in Clinical psychology. He is the uthor of 8 books, and is crrently working on a book about the haling power of laughter. Contact Joe at joeyguse@yahoo.com

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