The Joy of Your Brain… and the Dark Side of Laughter

The Joy of Your Brain… and the Dark Side of Laughter - ABC News:


A “seemingly quirky finding” peers into animal minds. It may also help show how Nazis abused play and laughter to horrid ends.

Suppose you could actually feel what it’s like to be another animal … not just guess, after observing its actions and behavior from the outside, but actually break through the prison of subjectivity — both yours and the squirrel’s — and know you can feel it, as if from inside the squirrel’s brain.

Of course, no two species have exactly the same set of sensory inputs. For example, we lack the bat’s special sonic radar, its “echolocation” systems. So ultimately we humans could only guess what it’s fully “like.”

But one scientist’s “seemingly quirky finding” — that rats emit a sort of giggling laughter when they are tickled by humans — is opening a new path for scientists and philosophers in their quest to answer this ancient question.

It’s all about emotion, and especially joy, that great reward in the brain, which, once experienced, we then naturally seek to achieve again … and which can help “make life worth living.”