From: William Benzon (bbenzon@mindspring.com)
Date: Sun 01 Dec 2002 - 11:57:30 GMT
on 12/1/02 4:45 AM, Mika Naimark at mikanmrk@rol.ru wrote:
> Dear list members,
> for many years I was looking for publications and information concerning
> the phenomenon of laughter, to refute or confirm the following ideas:
>
> Human laughter is not entirely unique -- cat's purring is another sample of
> the same nature. Here I mean a peculiar condition of the brain, socially
> expressed in small periodical convulsions of the body, and corresponding
> periodical sounds. The sounds seem to result from the said convulsions
> interference with breathing.
>
For laughter in rats, see:
Jaak Panksepp, Jeffrey Burgdorf, 50-kHz chirping (laughter?) in response to
conditioned and unconditioned tickle-induced reward in rats: effects of
social housing and genetic variables, Behavioural Brain Research 115 (2000)
2538
Abstract
In these studies the incidence of conditioned and unconditioned 50-kHz
ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) in young rats was measured in response to
rewarding manual tickling by an experimenter. We found that isolate-housed
animals vocalize much more then socially housed ones, and when their housing
conditions are reversed, they gradually shift their vocalization tendencies.
Isolate-housed animals also show quicker acquisition of instrumental tasks
for tickling, and exhibit less avoidance of tickling as compared to socially
housed Ss. Isolate-housed animals also show rapid acquisition of 50-kHz USVs
to a conditioned stimulus that predicts tickle reward, while socially housed
animals do not. We successfully bred for high and low vocalization rates in
response to tickling within four generations. The high tickle line showed
quicker acquisition of an instrumental task for, as well as less avoidance
of, tickling as compared to the random and low tickle lines. They also
played more. Lastly, we found that the glutamate antagonist MK-801 can
reduce tickle-induced 50-kHz USVs, but is resistant to opioid, dopamine and
cholinergic stimulant and blocking agents. Overall, these results suggest
that tickle evoked 50-kHz USVs may be a useful behavioral marker of positive
social affect in rats. Difficulties with such concepts are also discussed.
© 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords : Ultrasonic vocalizations; Reward; Reinforcement; Classical
conditioning; Instrumental conditioning; Appetitive motivation; Tickling;
Laughter
-- William L. Benzon 708 Jersey Avenue, Apt. 2A Jersey City, NJ 07302 201 217-1010 "You won't get a wild heroic ride to heaven on pretty little sounds."--George Ives =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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