Professor Sophie Scott CBE, director of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, TED talks speaker, and co-host of The Neuromantics podcast, is the latest guest to talk with Dan Murray-Serter, host of the Working In with Heights podcast.
In this episode, Sophie shares her insights from studying the science behind speech, and laughter.
She tells Dan that laughter is a non-verbal expression of emotion and that non-verbal signs are noises we make when we’re in more extreme emotional situations.
“For many years I called laughter a signal that you were amused,” Sophie says, and adds, “Darwin thought that laughter was actually an expression of joy. It’s now looking that it’s effectively a kind of a social joy, it’s a social emotion. Laughter is a very positive emotion, it’s one that we make primarily when we’re with other people.”
Sophie also talks about what she’s learnt from studying how the human brain reacts to laughter and cites a German study where they tickled people and found that the difference between laughter that was induced by someone else tickling you, and laughter where you just laughed on command was in the hypothalamus, which, she says would make some sense as it’s the prime part of our brains which releases our emotional reactions.
Part one of this two-part episode of Working In with Heights is available now and the second part on Sunday (13 December) on Apple, Spotify and all major podcast platforms.
