Gelastic seizures (GS) describe ictal laughter and are associated with hypothalamic lesions, as well as other cortical areas. Dacrystic seizures (DS), characterized by ictal crying, also have been reported in hypothalamic lesions and focal epilepsy. We describe a young girl with drug resistant focal dyscognitive seizures associated with gelastic and dacrystic features. However, neither laughter...

A patient manifested pathological laughter heralding the onset of brainstem stroke leading to a "locked-in" state. The pathological laughter did not recur. MRI revealed a bilateral ventral pontine infarct. The clinico-anatomical correlations of this rare phenomenon of fou rire prodromique are discussed.

BACKGROUND There have not yet been any published studies on the effects of laughter therapy on radiation-induced dermatitis in breast cancer patients treated with radiotherapy (RT). We assessed the effectiveness of laughter therapy in preventing radiation dermatitis in patients with breast cancer. METHODS Thirty-seven patients were prospectively enrolled in this study. Eighteen patients were ...

BACKGROUND Cancer is usually accompanied by considerable stress for the sufferer, and the stress has destructive effects on Chemotherapy treatment process. Therefore, the current research deals with the effect of yoga laughter on the cancer patients' stress before chemotherapy. METHODS In this research, as the first step, 37 cancer sufferers , who had been hospitalized in Shohada Tajrish Hosp...

This article deals with a typology of 45 techniques of humor that I found when doing research on the mechanisms that generate humor in texts, lists the techniques and applies them to a Jewish joke. It references the work of Vladimir Propp on folktales as analogous in that both are concerned with mechanisms in text that generate meaning. It also deals with four theories about why people find tex...

Beginning with an imagined encounter between Buster Keaton and Henri Bergson, this article offers a fundamental rereading of Bergson's Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning Comic (1900) its theoretical, historical, formal links to slapstick cinema. It focuses neglected references by Gilles Deleuze, James Agee sympathetic, schizophrenic, "boffo" laughter viscerally connecting audiences slapstick's a...