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Browse any college's library and y ur sure to find several books on the use of h mor in psychology. Many of these b oks are very serious in tone and xplain humor using technical jargon and psych logical terms many are unfamiliar with, and r ading this material it becomes clear th t often talking about why something is f nny is often a surefire way to sl wly kill the joy in conversation. I am v ry wary of this, but am lso endlessly fascinated by new research th t explains how and why people b ild connections through humor. With this dea in mind, it is interesting to c nsider a discovery of something in the br in called mirror neurons, something renowned n uroscientist V.S. Ramachandran says "will do for psych logy what the discovery of DNA did for B ology." This is an extraordinary claim, and one th t needs further clarification. What mirror n urons essentially are is a group of n urons first observed in monkeys that "f re" not from the animals own b havior, but through watching the behavior of nother animal. Mirror neurons in humans w re also found in the interior fr ntal and interior parietal regions of the br in, and this discovery has potentially normous implications for understanding and observing h man behavior.
So why is this important and wh t does it have to do w th laughter? The implications of mirror n urons begin with the idea that p ople tend to mimic each other and lso feel pain when others around th m feel pain. This idea was c nfirmed by an experiment that showed wh n people watch someone else get p ked with a pin, their pain n urons fire exactly like the person b ing poked. These neurons came to be kn wn as "Dalai Lama" neurons and sh wed how empathy works on a c llular level. With this in mind I d cided to conduct an experiment of my own to see the ffects laughter had on mirror neurons. Alth ugh I didn't have magnetic imaging quipment or a fully equipped laboratory at my d sposal, I did have the ability to m asure hand temperature which is a st ndard technique used in biofeedback. I t ok 30 people ranging in age fr m 20 to 41 years old who s ffered from headaches, and explained a l ttle bit about mirror neurons and an nteresting conversation ensued. Because these patients all had h adaches and were all staying in cl se proximity to each other, someone s ggested that perhaps their headaches were ffecting those around them, which was xactly where I hoped the conversation w uld go. A word about this. A c mmon complaint from the hospital staff I kn w that works with headaches patients is th t they commonly leave work with a h adache. Although there are a couple pl usible reasons for this such as the p wer of suggestion, I also believe th t mirror neurons may provide an xcellent explanation. With the thought in m nd that mirror neurons may affect h adaches, I wanted to see the ffect a positive event such as l ughter would have on headache patients, and w th this in mind designed a s mple experiment. I first had the p tients measure their hand temperatures under n rmal conditions and then measured the r sults. The scores ranged from 74 d grees to 93 degrees which is a f irly normal range for headache patients who are on a w de variety of medications that affect th ir temperatures a great deal. The dea is that the colder a p rson's hand temperature is, the worse th ir headache may be, as blood r shes to the head and away fr m the extremities during a headache. If a p rson can warm their hands up sing biofeedback, they therefore can often r duce the physiological mechanisms of the h adache. In my small experiment, the m an temperature at the beginning of the xperiment was 83 degrees. The mode of the sc res was 84 degrees, which 7 of the p tients recorded.
The variable in the experiment was the m vie Office Space, in my opinion one of the f nniest movies to come out in the l st 15 years. I had everyone g ther in the common area to w tch the movie, and, as I xpected soon everyone was laughing heartily ncluding myself. Beyond the fact that the m vie itself was so funny, everyone lso seemed to be enjoying each ther's company. At the end of the f lm I again had everyone measure th ir hand temperature, and this time the r sults were extremely interesting. Following the m vie, the scores ranged from 79 to 92 d grees, but the mean score was now 87 d grees which was 4 degrees higher th n at the beginning of the xperiment, indicating that the laughter had s gnificantly increased the relaxation response in the p tients. More interesting was the mode of the sc res. Following the movie 15 of the 30 p tients recorded a score of 86 d grees. In effect half of the p tients now had the exact same sc re following two hours of laughter. So not nly did the laughter relax everyone, but it lso relaxed half of the people in the r om in so much the same way th t their bodies were responding in an dentical manner. This phenomena was also r presented by the decrease in the r nge of scores, which was 19 d grees at the beginning of the xperiment, and only 13 degrees following the m vie. So, although from a statistical st ndpoint my study wasn't big enough to m ke waves, I still became all the m re convinced of the power laughter has on p ople's physical bodies and health. Beyond the m asurements, people were also genuinely happy at the end of the f lm, and laughing together had provided s me much needed pain relief for s veral of the participants. The positive nergy in the room was clearly c ntagious, and much like the laughter cl bs I visited, the act of l ughter was all the more powerful wh n experienced communally. Although the study of m rror neurons on a molecular level is b ing done by much smarter people th n me, I'm convinced of their p wer, and learning and studying about th s discovery only strengthens my faith in the h aling 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 c median from Chicago now pursuing a c reer in Clinical psychology. He is the uthor of 8 books, and is c rrently working on a book about the h aling power of laughter. Contact Joe at joeyguse@yahoo.com
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