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Why does laughter make spoken words seem funnier?
Poster Session C, Friday, October 25, 4:30 - 6:00 pm, Great Hall 3 and 4
Ceci Q. Cai1, Nadine Lavan2, Sinead H.Y. Chen1, Claire Z.X. Wang1, Ozan Cem Ozturk1, Roni Man Ying Chiu3, Sam J. Gilbert1, Sarah J. White1, Sophie K. Scott1; 1University College London, 2Queen Mary University of London, 3City University of Hong Kong
Why does laughter make spoken words seem funnier? We previously found that adding laughter to jokes made the jokes seem funnier to participants, and the more spontaneous the laughter, the funnier it made the joke. The same effects were found in both neurotypical and autistic people. Human conversations are immersed in laughter, with spontaneous and conversational laughter carrying different socio-emotional meanings in daily interaction and various social contexts. Although we found that neurotypical and autistic adults process laughter in a similar way, similar behaviours between autistic and neurotypical adults can be underpinned by different patterns of brain activation. To explore the neural mechanisms underlying this, we used fMRI to study the implicit processing of different types of laughter, and the differences between autistic and neurotypical adults. To shorten the duration of scanning, we used funny words instead of jokes in this study. We asked autistic and neurotypical adults (comparable for age, gender and IQ) to passively listen to funny words, followed by spontaneous laughter, conversational laughter, or noise-vocoded vocalizations. Behaviourally, words presented with spontaneous laughter were rated as funnier than words presented with conversational laughter, for both neurotypical and autistic adults. Neuroimaging results indicated an increased widespread activation when the funny words were presented with laughter compared to the presentation of single spoken words. Specifically, we found increased activation in the mPFC for neurotypical adults during implicit processing of words presented with conversational laughter than spontaneous laughter, but this difference is not found in autistic adults. Additionally, autistic adults showed greater activation in the SMA, a part of the sensorimotor cortex, when listening to words presented with either type of laughter. The study also identified a role for the precuneus in the interaction of words and laughter. Together, these findings suggest the critical roles of the mPFC, sensorimotor cortex and precuneus in the implicit processing of laughter and words, emphasizing a role for mentalizing in understanding laughter. This study sheds light on the complex interplay between spoken language and laughter, enhancing our understanding of how laughter serves both as an emotional expression and a sophisticated social signal during social communication.
Topic Areas: Speech Perception,