Week # 2 - January 20, 2010

Your Brain on Laughter! Physiology and evolution of laughter. Can laughter and/or humor be addictive? “Dogs may laugh but only cats get the joke!” Diversity focus:Laughter as a solution to overmedicating a nation? Are certain ethnic groups in the U.S. more susceptible to major depression than others? • Depression and other related diseases in the U.S. • Recognition, treatment, and acceptance of depression among different groups: general and/or cultural factors? • Verbal and visual material: mostly American.

Readings for Week #2:
Kawakami, Kiyobumi, Kiyoko Takai-Kawakami, Masaki Tomonoga, Juri Suzuli, Tomiyo Kusaka, and Takashi Okai: Origins of Smile and Laughter: A Preliminary Study. In Early Human Development 82 (2006): 61-66.
Krause, et al.: The Derived FOXP2 Variant of Modern Humans Was Shared with Neandertals. In Current Biology (2007), doi:10.1016/j.cub.2007.10.008.
Panksepp, Jaak: Neuroevolutionary Sources of Laughter and Social Joy: Modeling Primal Human Laughter in Laboratory Rats. In Behavioural Brain Research 182, 2 (2007): 231-244.
Panksepp, Jaak and Jeff Burgdorf: “Laughing" Rats and the Evolutionary Antecedents of Human Joy? In Physiology and Behavior 79 (2003): 533-547.
Parvizi, J., S.W. Anderson, C.O. Martin, H. Damasio H, and A.R. Damasio: Pathological Laughter and Crying: A Link to the Cerebellum. In Brain 124 (2001): 1708-1719.
Wasilewska, Ewa: Vocalizing Laughter, Recognizing Humor… A Journey into Mysteries of a Brain. A chapter for a yet unpublished Anthropology of Humor: A Reader. Edited by Hugo De Burgos.
Canada. 2009. Only for the internal (course) use.