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Wrinkles are just renting space from smiles

What is laughter? Is that a question we even need to ask? I mean we do it or we don’t… sort of like yawning, I suppose: it’s contagious. But, I’ve always been fond of looking for Duchenne lines around the eye corners to validate the smiles aimed at me; are there such things as Duchenne laugh lines? Or can we fake them?

I suppose we could, but what about solitary laughter: does that require laugh lines. I’m not trying to convince anybody then, so why paste them on? Well, I think my mirror image usually wears one when I laugh, but that is a sort of boss-employee relationship, so I imagine it thinks it has to… even though I don’t usually check to see if it is showing sufficient obeisance.

Anyway, I’m given to believe that laughter is by and large a social phenomenon[i] so I guess the mirror is just being polite. I, however, am not overly social; I can laugh quite happily at things and thoughts while I’m driving alone. Actually, I suppose I’m seldom alone on a long drive even along an almost deserted prairie highway: I form a bond with the solitary vehicle ahead of me which I am following and feel quite disappointed when it turns off onto a road going in another direction.

I imagine it is a farmer going home to milk the cows after a long night of celebration in the little town where we joined routes; I find myself laughing at the ribald jokes I’ve been making up about him before he turns onto a little dirt road…

Then I feel lonely until I see another car turning onto the road a mile or so ahead in an old beat-up rusty truck and imagine he has just escaped from a tryst with my previous escort’s wife. Again, my bored but over-imaginative mind makes me I laugh, and the miles of open prairie seem to roll on not quite as endlessly as they might have… Am I alone in this? Am I really that far off the middle of the Bell Curve?

I mean when I see or hear someone laughing, at the very least I have difficulty suppressing a grin. I am, I suppose, bonding by proxy. After all, laugher, as long as it is not directed at me, is a lot like flypaper isn’t it? And, unlike the stuck flies, I suspect it relieves the stress I often feel in many new social settings.

Apparently, even in the most ordinary conversations, there is frequent (non-Duchenned?) laughter though: ‘roughly six times per ten minutes of conversation, on average’. The laughs tend sneak in and stop unexpectedly; if you really listen for them, they are short and often lower in pitch. I miss a lot of them, I’m afraid; I don’t think I’m meant to laugh along with them like with the helpless or involuntary laughs that sometimes afflict people, or after a joke I actually understand. Those are longer and higher pitched, involving strange squeaks and wheezes; they are hard to miss, especially if you weren’t privy to the initial stimulus.

For some academic psychologists and their post-docs, laughter seems to be a welcome if unusual challenge -or phrased a little differently, a subject bursting with opportunities for potential papers and citations.

Apparently, different regions of the brain all appear connected to laughter; in studies, there are five or six areas of the brain where stimulation triggers loud laughter in the patient; don’t ask why they might want (or be able) to do that, although I suppose it’s important to know that delighted laughter triggers the opioid reward system. It also taps into the serotonin network which has an effect on our sensitivity to pain.

Involuntary laughter also seems to be something we share with other mammals, even when they don’t get our jokes. It is also involved in rough and tumble play amongst them. Humans have to be careful about that however: it’s something that can lead to false arrests if it occurs on a street corner. I’m not sure if that has ever been as rigorously studied, however.

Voluntary laughter, is a newer evolutionary addition linked to voluntary movements in humans, such as speaking aloud. This seems to have a ‘primary role in strategic communication and social negotiation, so may explain the particular use of laughter in conversation as a sort of spoken punctuation.’ It’s a system studied mainly in humans however, and is associated with ‘complex vocal acts such as speaking, [and] singing.’

Interestingly, voluntary (fake?) laughter requires ‘more complex and refined motor control than spontaneous laughter, occupying a middle ground between laughter and spoken language – not only functionally but anatomically as well.’

The authors of the essay I am quoting have an insightful conclusion: ‘research on human laughter is turning out to be something of a Rosetta Stone for understanding a surprising range of phenomena – including the origins of the social brain in mammals, the mechanisms of bonding and empathy, pain modulation, language in conversation, and emotional contagion.’

I, however, am still enthralled with my somewhat asocial ability to laugh at things all by myself: things that only I seem to find amusing. I’m not sure whether I am tapping into the older or the newer system, though. I don’t think it really matters, but when I am on a long drive (especially through the prairies which is my wont) humorous thoughts keep me from falling asleep: that’s no doubt partially due to my penchant for pulling over to the side of the road and writing down an amusing (or simply intriguing) thought. It has also led to my climbing over a barbed wire fence and into a farmer’s field to investigate something -like, say, mistaking a pump-jack for an escaped giant chicken plucking silently away in hopes of finding some stray ungathered grain; or, more easily, maybe identifying a fragment of clothing barely hanging onto the fence in the wind.

Last year for example, on my way to Saskatoon I found (but didn’t touch) an impaled pair of dirty underpants, one part of which was missing. I sat giggling outside the fence wondering if I should log it as an example of an unusual single underpant, or merely the interesting result of a recent nearby liaison. I was sorely tempted to climb the fence in search of the other pant; I was also unsure of how I should categorize my laughter.

I suppose, in the scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter, though: I think I got an opioid surge and enough serotonin to lessen the painful cut from one of the barbs on the fence; and I enjoyed it!

Isn’t that what Life and laughter are all about?

[i] https://theconversation.com/what-happens-in-your-brain-when-you-cant-stop-laughing-293477

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