Gelastic syncope or laughter-induced syncope is a rare disease often misdiagnosed as narcolepsy or cataplexy. We report a 54-year-old man with syncopal episodes. Each episode started after laughter, leading to light-headedness with blurring of vision and loss of consciousness for a few seconds. The episodes resolved spontaneously. The treatment of gelastic syncope is the same as that for neural...

Each of the previous three articles in this series has examined one of the three main traditions of humour theory; those based around incongruity, superiority and the release of energy. We have seen that each of these theoretical traditions sheds some light upon humour and laughter, but also that all fail in their overly ambitious task of offering a fully comprehensive theory. This has not dete...

Harold Pinter’s 1958/1980 play The Hothouse presents the laughter effect by making use of rational and irrational approaches comic. In its absurdist tone, two act aims to mock hierarchical power structures with setting characters. With witty playful dialogues, creates amalgamating social psychological functions laughter. This article seeks study closely from way effect. Using theories Henri Ber...

This study investigates the facial features of schadenfreude laughter in historic illustrations by applying the Facial Action Coding System and assesses the decoding by naïve subjects. Results show that while the encoding of schadenfreude laughter is heterogeneous, schadenfreude is decoded when the facial expression unites markers of joy (Duchenne Display, consisting of the orbicularis oculi pa...

In this paper, we analyze acoustic profiles of fillers (i.e. filled pauses, FPs) and laughter with the aim to automatically localize these nonverbal vocalizations in a stream of audio. Among other features, we use voice quality features to capture the distinctive production modes of laughter and spectral similarity measures to capture the stability of the oral tract that is characteristic for F...

This study investigates the facial features of schadenfreude laughter in historic illustrations by applying the Facial Action Coding System and assesses the decoding by naïve subjects. Results show that while the encoding of schadenfreude laughter is heterogeneous, schadenfreude is decoded when the facial expression unites markers of joy (Duchenne Display, consisting of the orbicularis oculi pa...

In this article I explore the relationship between laugh responses and turns which they orient to. consider whether it is possible to identify properties of prior that recipient may be orienting in laughing. Thus, begin by briefly exploring laughter humour interaction. But point some difficulties identifying what makes discourse humorous, argue not simply a reaction perception humour. Laughter ...

The human speech production system is composed of the lungs, trachea, larynx, nasal cavity and oral cavity as shown in Fig. 1. Speech is simply a sound wave originating from the lungs. Air coming out of the lungs first passes through the trachea and then through the vocal tract. The shape of the vocal tract determines the speech sound produced. The position of the lips, tongue, velum, teeth and...