When we laugh, when we hear someone tell a joke, you might be laughing at the physical comedy aspect. We're laughing in part because we know that they feel pain, right? There's an implicit understanding that they're human, they have the same constraints that we do. And so what I find really compelling and fascinating about the study as well is that Anna felt alongside alongside the mechanical act of laughter. She felt joy and mirth. But there's actually a 20th way, perhaps of looking at it, where you could actually say that maybe, you know, if you stimulated the part of the brain that was responsible for feeling rage, for example, and then you showed someone a
While operating on a 16-year-old girl who suffered from severe seizures, neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried stumbled on the region of the brain that makes us laugh. To neuroscientist Patrick House, Fried's ability to produce laughter surgically raises deep and disconcerting questions about how the brain works. Join Fried, House, and EconTalk's Russ Roberts for a live broadcast from Jerusalem's Shalem College that is a sequel of sorts to House's earlier appearance on EconTalk. House and Fried discuss the mystery of consciousness and try to square the biological bases for emotions with the circle of our humanity.