“Only in animals
is the man who laughs ”
(Aristotle
in “Of the parts of animals)

The literature on laughter as a therapeutic method in the form of interviews or articles, are increasingly common in the daily press, both print and digital. At the same time, in these times of deep economic crisis that affects the welfare of the majority of society, seem to multiply offers workshops in which they promised to find the joy of life and happiness, as well as the alleviation or cure wide variety of ailments and disorders, through meetings in which they promised to teach the dynamics of laughter. ”

Since biomedical strictest orthodoxy, the proposal of laughter as a therapeutic method is viewed with alienation, and falls within the vague territory of alternative medicine under the name or laugh geloterapia (from Greek “GELOS” Laughter and verb “gela” laugh).

However, doctors, albeit sideways, have continued to deal with laughter. In an editorial in the journal British Medical Journal of March 1994, entitled Dr Rabelais’s 500 years old prescription ( “500 years of the prescription of Dr. Rabelais), recalled that François Rabelais, the famous character the sixteenth century, an unusual mix of scholarship, humanism, literary creativity and vulgarity, a former Franciscan friar, a former Benedictine monk and eventually a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Montpellier, as well as author of the memorable stories of the giants Gargantua and Pantagruel, father and son, had been recommended as effective therapy laughter and claimed that laughter caused by reading his books was a laughter therapy. At the beginning of his book Gargantua (1533), and as an introduction to readers is the following poem:

Friends readers read this book,
despojaos of any condition
and, reading it, do not escandalicéis.
Contains neither the bad nor infection.
Perfectly true that neither saves.
Learn it, at least, to laugh;
Another argument, my heart can not choose.
Seeing the sadness you mine and reconcome,
Laughter is better than tears writing,
laughter because that is what the Home.

(Castilian translation of Gargantua by François Rabelais, by Dr. Antonio García-Miralles Imperial Die, Editorial Juventud, Barcelona, 1972).

Another French doctor, also for those times, Laurent Joubert of Montpellier, published in the year 1579, an extensive Traité du ris ( “Treaty of laughter”) which, in addition to reflecting on the essence of laughter, described his mechanism body with the contractions of the muscles around mouth and eyes, associated with sudden jolts of the diaphragm, where the laughter was stentorian.

But when, as in our time, causing laughter is proposed as a therapeutic method, what I was laughing? Of laughter and positive human emotion, that seeks joy and happiness suddenly, or the sequence of biomechanical body expression, concentrated, according to their intensity in the facial muscles and speech, more or less noisy, with the participation of respiratory muscles, including diaphragm, and their alleged positive physiological impact on perceived well-being?

What social value can have the fact that the positive emotion felt by the laughs that are often triggered following a negative situation, inconsistent, suffered by another person or even by oneself? No doubt, as its etymology reminds us that a sudden situation “ridiculous” (from the Latin “ridiculus” that makes you laugh, laughable or pathetic) that causes laughter in the notes. This happened in the famous anecdote of the philosopher Tales of Miletus, of which Plato in his dialogue Teeter, that “while dealing with the sky, looking up, he fell into a well. As he laughed at a girl East Macedonia, funny and beautiful, while saying he wanted with all the passion to understand things from the sky it was that which was hidden in his nose and before your feet. “Let us therefore first , the meaning of the words that we speak of laughter.

The Dictionary of the RAE defines the action of laughing (derived from the Latin verb “ride, Rider”) as “expressing joy through certain movements of the face, often accompanied by shaking of the body and release of peculiar inarticulate sounds, and laughter as “movement of the mouth and other parts of the face showing happiness, while the smile is defined as” laugh a little or slight, and without noise. ” Beyond the laughter, laughter is “an impetuous and noisy laughter,” a stentorian laughter, as “very strong, loud or roaring.”

The Oxford Dictionary of something deeper in the social meanings of laughter ( “laugh”) and defines it as “the movements and sounds that express joy with fun and sometimes disregard certain, while the smile (” smile “) is described as” an expression pleasant, friendly and fun, with the commissures of the mouth upwards, and sometimes as “an indulgent look favorable.”

But just as most enthusiasts speeches, with little scientific evidence (or with topical references to the well endorphins) that try to convince the presumed therapeutic benefits of laughter, they must be quarantined, it is also true that the concern of human beings so that laughter is, and means for their welfare, not far from a trivial matter that can be released from scientific medicine, with an indulgent smile.

Because the significance for human well-being of laughter, an expression of a complex skill (which is visible as a smile to 5 weeks in the newborn and laughter around the 4 months), which was interpreted by Darwin as evolutionarily social expression of happiness has been, over the centuries of controversial ideas, both philosophical and anthropological. Reflections that were summarized in 2001 by Quentin Skinner, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, in a brilliant lecture delivered at the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences of Paris, under the title “Philosophy and laughter.”

By contrast, scientific research seeking to define the human brain circuits for anatomical and physiological stimuli for running laughter “normal”, have been raised demand in recent decades, why the data used is still very fragmentary. These investigations have taken as a basis for the study of patients with laughter “pathological”, a “laughing symptoms of a neurological illness (as epilepsy, cerebral stroke or brain injury limited). In a 2003 review published in the journal Brain on “Correlations between nervous laughter and humor,” concludes that the complex mechanism to express corporally laugh depends on the activity of two independent neural circuits: A , a track, “involuntary” emotional nature, which involves the amygdala, the thalamus, the hypothalamus and area under the thalamus and the brainstem, and furthermore, a circuit “voluntary,” cognitive, whose origin is motor areas in the frontal lobe, which is the leading, via pyramidal stimuli interpreting the situation, born in the motor cortex, anterior to the brainstem. Both circuits, and therefore the response of laughter to a laughable situation, appears to be coordinated by a nerve center located in the back of the brain bulge.

Coinciding with these recent investigations of the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of laughter, has increased the interest of the most prestigious medical journals for the beneficial role of laughter and humor in the relationship between patient and doctor.

As Quentin Skinner notes at the end of his lecture, the laugh belongs to that class of involuntary bodily actions for which the civilization of modern European culture, called the voluntary control. The letters from the Earl of Chesterfield to his son in which he instructed about the ideal conduct of a gentleman, said that “nothing is more crass or rude as that laughter audible distortion with striking face, and that rebels a shameful loss of control of the body. I would like to see you smile often, but not listen to laugh. ”

Learning to smile amicably, with empathy, and when the opportunity arises, with a slight laugh and sound distortion contained facial and body are examples of restraint that should be included in a healthy lifestyle.

Author: Professor Christopher Pera