The size of human social networks significantly exceeds the network that can be maintained by social grooming or touching in other primates. It has been proposed that endogenous opioid release after social laughter would provide a neurochemical pathway supporting long-term relationships in humans (Dunbar, 2012), yet this hypothesis currently lacks direct neurophysiological support. We used PET ...

Wise men of intellects know that the materialistic human body is genetically controlled, environmentally modulated and controlled by unknown deluding power (Maya) or ULTIMATE. In the current period of time, Lust, Anger, Greed, Pride, Jealous, duplicity, perversity, hypocrisy, malice, heresy, pride, infatuation, concupiscence and arrogance pervade the whole universe. All are unreal, even though ...

Mind-body interventions are beneficial in stress-related mental and physical disorders. Current research is finding associations between emotional disorders and vagal tone as indicated by heart rate variability. A neurophysiologic model of yogic breathing proposes to integrate research on yoga with polyvagal theory, vagal stimulation, hyperventilation, and clinical observations. Yogic breathing...

A young mother catches her nine-month-old infant's gaze, smiles atl him, and brings her hands slowly up and together to cover her eyes. "Uphi? Uphi?" ("Where? Where?") she asks brightly, with high ris­ ing pitch. The baby stares transfIxed at his mother's hands, a small smile of anticipation beginning to spread on his face as the sus­ pense builds over three seconds. "Na-a-a-a-a-n hut" ("Here!"...

WHAT IF THERE WAS A FREE MAGIC PILL that could reduce your students’stress, anxiety, and tension while increasing their self-esteem, alertness, creativity, learning, and memory? Would you prescribe it? Finding a treatment that is free and without side effects and helps to improve learning and memory would seem to be an improbable task. However, based on numerous scientific studies conducted ove...

An abandoned 8-year-old male child, who was subjected to physical abuse, presented with abnormal behaviour and focal seizures. The focal seizures included involuntary running attacks (epilepsia cursiva) and uncontrollable laughter (gelastic epilepsy). The occurrence of cursive and gelastic seizures in the same patient is extremely rare. These fits were probably a late sequel of head trauma.

Laughter is often considered to be the product of humour. However, laughter is a social emotion, occurring most often in interactions, where it is associated with bonding, agreement, affection, and emotional regulation. Laughter is underpinned by complex neural systems, allowing it to be used flexibly. In humans and chimpanzees, social (voluntary) laughter is distinctly different from evoked (i...

Laughter is a highly variable signal, which can be caused by a spectrum of emotions. This makes the automatic detection of laughter a challenging, but interesting task. We perform automatic laughter detection using audio-visual data from the AMI Meeting Corpus. Audiovisual laughter detection is performed by fusing the results of separate audio and video classifiers on the decision level. This r...

Brain functional states are established by functional connectivities between brain regions. In experienced meditators (13 Tibetan Buddhists, 15 QiGong, 14 Sahaja Yoga, 14 Ananda Marga Yoga, 15 Zen), 19-channel EEG was recorded before, during and after that meditation exercise which their respective tradition regards as route to the most desirable meditative state. The head surface EEG data were...