We were delighted to welcome 75 guests and hear Sophie Scott's keynote on laughter: often overlooked and underestimated, and very social. Did you know that it's scientifically possible to distinguish between real and fake laughter?
After the talk, there was ample room for networking and we were especially happy that we could connect the laughter experts at the University of Vienna (Dr. Carolina Pletti and Verena Schäfer, M.Sc., both from the Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology under the direction of Prof. Stefanie Höhl) with Sophie Scott. We are excited to see what will come of this new connection
The Evolution and Neuroscience of Laughter
Abstract: Human laughter is often associated with humour. However our use of laughter is highly modulated by social factors - both the presence of other people and our relationship to those people affect the likelihood of people laughing. And although we do laugh at humour, we mostly laugh for social and communicative reasons. In this talk I will explore the older evolution of laughter, the neurobiology of laughter processing, and address some of the factors that influence individual differences in laughter; I will finish by considering some similarities and differences between the laughter of human and other animals.
About Professor Sophie Scott, CBE
Sophie Scott is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Head of the Speech Communications Group. Since 2019, she has served as Director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London (UCL).
