editorials V ictor Borge, the famous comedian, once said, " Laughter is the shortest distance between two people. " Humour is a powerful tool for improving communication and putting people at ease. It is underused in doctor-patient relationships and in medical environments. Laughter releases tension mediated through the autonomic nervous system.

In this article I explore the relationship between laugh responses and the turns which they orient to. I consider whether it is possible to identify properties of the prior turns that the recipient may be orienting to in laughing. Thus, I begin by briefly exploring the relationship between laughter and humour in interaction. But I point to some of the difficulties in identifying what it is that...

Laughter is an important social signal which may have various communicative functions (Chapman 1983). Humans laugh at humorous stimuli or to mark their pleasure when receiving praised statements (Provine 2001); they also laugh to mask embarrassment (Huber and Ruch 2007) or to be cynical. Laughter can also act as social indicator of in-group belonging (Adelswärd 1989); it can work as speech regu...

Humor and laughter have been thought to be beneficial for thousands of years. Although much has been written on this subject, there is very little written about the actual use of humor in practice. This article reviews the role that humor and laughter may play in medicine in general and palliative care in particular. In addition, it introduces a model that clinicians can follow when trying to i...

Humour/laughter is a human entity and activity. It takes place in almost all kinds of social interactions. Most us cannot help laughing at something funny our daily routines. Laughter the fundamental mode expression common to beings. From this perspective, Simon considered one most significant playwrights who uses laughter elements skilfully his works. He called “laugh machine". Marvin Neil (19...

A synchronous database of acoustic and 3D facial marker data was built for audio-visual laughter synthesis. Since the aim is to use this database for HMM-based modeling and synthesis, the amount of collected data from one given subject had to be maximized. The corpus contains 251 utterances of laughter from one male participant. Laughter was elicited with the help of humorous videos. The result...

David Geff en School of Medicine at UCLA Los Angeles Mrs. R, a 68-year-old retired teacher, is referred to you for suspected mania after a closed head injury from a car accident. The referring physician reports that Mrs. R experienced mild anterograde amnesia that has resolved, but she continues to suff er from “persistent mood swings as evidenced by substantial inappropriate laughter.” Mrs. R ...

There is now a relatively good understanding of the broad range of direct and indirect effects of humor and laughter on perceptions, attitudes, judgments and emotions, which can potentially benefit the physical and psychological state. This article presents a review and discussion of the use of humor and laughter in treating people with serious mental illness, distinguishing between clinical pa...