On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Jeff Ricker wrote:
> >From the NY Times Science section (go to
> http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/health/031400hth-vital-signs.html
> to see the original):
>
> "Neurologists are reporting several cases in which small, tumorlike
> masses can cause people to feel as though they have to laugh. The
> patients, whose conditions were described in a recent issue of the
> journal Neurology, said that the sensation was not unpleasant, but that
> it could be unnerving. One 24-year-old woman described the feeling as
> being "like a tickling in my head" that lasted 10 to 15 seconds and
> occurred 10 times a day. A 25-year-old man said he would suppress the
> urge to laugh unless it appeared appropriate to his surroundings.
>
> "The condition is caused by a noncancerous mass called a hypothalamic
> hamartoma.
There's a report I've been meaning to retrieve from Nature on
electrical stimulation of the human brain eliciting laughter (Fried,
1998). The location is reported as the "anterior part of the
supplementary motor area" and, in an accompanying science update
commentary, further identified as being in the "left superior frontal
gyrus". That's quite some distance from the hypothalamus. Curious.
-Stephen
Fried, I. et al (19998). Electric current stimulates laughter. Nature,
391, 650.
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