In this paper we describe a mobile and wearable devices app that recognises laughter from speech in real-time. The laughter detection is based on a deep neural network architecture, which runs smoothly and robustly, even natively on a smartwatch. Further, this paper presents results demonstrating that our approach achieves state-of-the-art laughter detection performance on the SSPNet Vocalizati...

A technique to synthesize laughter based on time-domain behavior of real instances of human laughter is presented. In the speech synthesis community, interest in improving the expressive quality of synthetic speech has grown considerably. While the focus has been on the linguistic aspects, such as precise control of speech intonation to achieve desired expressiveness, inclusion of nonlinguistic...

That laughter could be used as a medical therapeutic intervention was highly popularized by the story of Norman Cousins, initially published as a case history in JAMA and then later as a biographical book, Anatomy of an Illness.1 Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review and one of America’s best known intellectuals, treated his own his own ankylosing spondylitis using Marx Brothers–induced laught...

Laughter facilitates the adaptive response to stress by increasing the psychological distance from distress and by enhancing social relations. To test these hypotheses, the authors related measures of bereaved adults' laughter and smiling 6 months postloss to measures of their (a) subjective emotion and dissociation from distress, (b) social relations, and (c) responses they evoked in others. D...

BACKGROUND Pathological laughter can be a sign of epilepsy, psychiatric illness, effect of toxins or psychotropic drugs or of structural brain disease. METHOD Case Studies. RESULT Two patients developed inappropriate uncontrollable laughter following intravenous sodium valproate for treatment of epilepsy. CONCLUSION Pathological laughter can be a side effect of intravenous sodium valproate.

This work focuses on the demonstration of previously achieved results in the automatic detection of laughter from natural discourses. In the previous work features of two different modalities, namely audio and video from unobtrusive sources, were used to build a system of recurrent neural networks called Echo State networks to model the dynamics of laughter. This model was then again utilized t...

AIM To investigate the effects of laughter therapy on depression, cognitive function, quality of life, and sleep of the elderly in a community. METHODS Between July and September 2007, the total study sample consisted of 109 subjects aged over 65 divided into two groups; 48 subjects in the laughter therapy group and 61 subjects in the control group. The subjects in the laughter therapy group ...

Humor and laughter can be effective self-care tools to cope with stress. An ability to find humor gives us a sense of perspective on our problems. Laughter provides a physical release for accumulated tension. The article reviews research on the effect of humor and laughter on our immune function and resilience to stress. Resources for finding humor are included.

Various brain areas in both cortical as well as subcortical locations are involved in pathological laughter. Pathological laughter may be seen as a prodromal symptom or acute manifestation or late sequel of stroke. Various other neuropsychiatric conditions attribute to stroke. It is often difficult to ascertain the cause of pathological laughter in the presence of multiple brain pathologies. He...