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What neurotransmitters are responsible for laughter

laughter is the best medicine

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#1 Thorsten3

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Posted 25 April 2012 - 03:04 PM


Doesn't it feel great when you have a real good laugh? When you laugh to the point your sides hurt?

I love that warm, fuzzy almost high type feeling you get from it.

Then we get told it releases endorphins, boosts the immune system and is good for our health!

The thing is, after life goes on, these episodes seem to become less frequent and it almost becomes harder to laugh, even though I'm not depressed anymore.

I doubt this, but is there anyway one could manipulate their neurotransmitters through supplementation to induce such states?

I think being around people that make you feel good or even finding people that are funny (not necessarily splitting your sides funny) would be good enough. I would guess you can't be like that all the time. Although any guy that can make a woman laugh like that is sure going to get into her knickers as woman are easily led by such guys (just my theory). So with that in mind, it's time for me to work on my comedian skills :-D

Any thoughts?

Edited by Thorsten2, 25 April 2012 - 03:05 PM.


#2 Thorsten3

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Posted 25 April 2012 - 03:14 PM

Maybe constant persuit of hedonism will lower the chances of these states occuring?

Lowering your hedonistic state might make you go out of your way to persue these rare joyous states?

I could be wrong though?

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#3 nito

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Posted 25 April 2012 - 05:03 PM

hashish

#4 hippocampus

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Posted 26 April 2012 - 09:25 AM

piracetam made me incredibly happy yesterday and I laughed a lot. it's not something that you can induce with drug. it may help for you to be more happy, but actual laughter is dependent on situation. so, anything that is good against depression is probably good for laughter.

#5 Thorsten3

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Posted 26 April 2012 - 10:40 AM

Hashish just makes me lazy, unmotivated and stuck on a road to nowhere.

I think laughing is a very complex thing though and probably involves endorphins.

#6 medievil

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Posted 13 May 2012 - 10:10 AM

Glutamine in high doses made me constantly laugh without reason wich drove my girlfriend crazy; if it was in tune with funny shit it would have been fun; it was like i was on weed except i was even laughing without reason at all instead of just non funny shit like weed.

#7 Sartac

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Posted 14 May 2012 - 04:14 AM

Which came first, the laughter or the neurotransmitters responsible?

Edited by sartac, 14 May 2012 - 04:15 AM.


#8 Dexedrine

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Posted 17 May 2012 - 10:13 AM

It's hard to make generalizations about neurotransmitters, the brain simply isn't that simple. I would speculate that glutamate, acetylcholine, dopamine receptors would be activated consistent with prefrontal cortex excitement which is what's correlated with laughter.

Interesting thing from wikipedia

In 1998, neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried, MD, PhD described a 16-year-old female patient (referred to as "patient AK") who laughed when her SFG was stimulated with electric current during treatment for epilepsy.[3] Electrical stimulation was applied to the cortical surface of AK's left frontal lobe while an attempt was made to locate the focus of her epileptic seizures (which were never accompanied by laughter).
Fried identified a 2 cm by 2 cm area on the left SFG where stimulation produced laughter consistently (over several trials). AK reported that the laughter was accompanied by a sensation of merriment or mirth. AK gave a different explanation for the laughter each time, attributing it to an (unfunny) external stimulus. Thus, laughter was attributed to the picture she was asked to name (saying "the horse is funny"), or to the sentence she was asked to read, or to persons present in the room ("you guys are just so funny... standing around").
Increasing the level of stimulation current increased the duration and intensity of laughter. For example, at low currents only a smile was present, while at higher currents a louder, contagious laughter was induced. The laughter was also accompanied by the stopping of all activities involving speech or hand movements.



In terms of drugs and laughter, a whole host of drugs can cause unprovoked excessive laughter, 5-HT2A receptor agonists (LSD, DMT, Mescaline), CB1 partial and full agonists (THC, JWH-018), kappa-opiod agonists (Salvia Divanorium (salvinorian A) )
Also, many other drugs can cause a state of hyperactive behavior which results in a lower laughter threshold and more uncontrolled laughter (people laughing after a few drinks etc)
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#9 jadamgo

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Posted 25 May 2012 - 04:20 AM

Even though you're not depressed, some antidepressants can increase your extraversion. Long-term SSRI treatment appears to do this, and I'll personally vouch for MAOIs doing it too.

That said, developing your comedic ability is a much more specific way to get exactly what you asked for (more funny moments) without side effects. There isn't a drug out there that helps you do a specific behavior more/less frequently without changing other, unrelated things in the brain.

If you're wanting to improve general mood, there's once again the option to use an antidepressant. Your friends here are MAOIs, bupropion, tianeptine, and low-dose SSRIs. Tricyclics have too many side effects to improve general mood, as do the other atypicals.

As above, it's better advice if I suggest that you change your lifestyle to improve your happiness. I like Seligman's acronym PERMA, denoting 5 elements of a happy life: Pleasure, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Achievement. Laughter is a form of pleasure, and pleasure is pretty cool. It's also one of the harder elements of happiness to sustainably increase, and it gives very little return on investment for all the time you spend on it. Don't get me wrong -- you can sustainably increase pleasure, just like you can successfully day-trade on the stock market. But it takes lots of time and effort, and there's a learning curve involved. Also, if you don't have other strategies to be happy, you'll be left high and dry when you're having an unpleasant day.

Increasing the other elements of happiness gives you more bang for your buck, so I'll discuss them.

Engagement means Flow -- that state where you're so concentrated on what you're doing that you forget about everything else. No thoughts of the past or future or what people think of you or how you feel right now, in fact, often there are no verbal thoughts at all -- only the task at hand. To be clear, zoning out in front of a tv show or while driving is not flow. With Flow, you're totally zoned in. Your mind is very awake and aware; it's just only aware of action. Personally, I tend to encounter flow when singing, exercising, and sometimes when writing or socializing. It only happens in things that you really care about, and a good way to increase happiness is to make sure you're doing several different things that you really care about, every single day. Of course, flow does not always happen when you do something engaging, but you'll be happier if you give yourself several chances to experience flow every day.

Relationships is exactly what it sounds like -- friends, romantic partners, family. The more good interactions you have with these people, the better you feel. Focusing on developing close relationships with people (or if necessary, finding people who you want to get close to) is a major investment in your ability to laugh so hard you can't breathe. After all, inside jokes are some of the funniest ones, and things that happen in real life -- stuff comedians can't write -- is usually what makes you laugh that hard. There are plenty of ways to increase closeness and harmony in your relationships, some of which are obvious and some have to be learned. One simple technique is to genuinely thank people at least 3 times a day. (Polite-but-emotionally-empty "thank you"s don't count. It has to be heartfelt.)

Meaning has to do with character, values, what you feel like you're on the Earth to do, God's plan for you, what needs to be done, your life's calling... There are so many ways to describe it, and specific terminology varies by subculture. The common thread to all these disparate ideas is "participating in something bigger than myself," whether you conceive of it as "God" or "the greater good" or "improving people's lives" or "Truth"... whatever means something to you.
You can be much happier by doing things every day that feel meaningful to you, and also doing less of those things that go against your values. This is one of the most important elements of a happy life -- if you don't have antisocial personality disorder, you will be happier if you make your life more meaningful!

A for Achievement, or Accomplishment, or self-Actualizing. I probably don't need to explain what these things are. You might do them because they're meaningful, or because they're fun, or because they make money, or for any reason really. The point is that you practice something and you get better and better at it. At various points, you encounter milestones that clearly indicate that you've gotten something important done -- you get a promotion in a job you love, you sing the hardest song you've ever performed live and the audience gives you a standing ovation, or you cross the finish line at your first marathon... That moment of "Yes! I did it!" You start out as a beginner, and go uphill from there. Some of these things are on your bucket list. Some are on your long-term to-do list. They won't necessarily give you Pleasure every day -- frustration may be more common in the beginning. But every time you practice at it, you feel proud of yourself for working towards the goal. If you move even an inch closer to your life-long goals every single day, you will be much happier before you even reach the first goal.

Yes, Martin Seligman invented that acronym in his most recent book, Flourish. But I'm not talking about it because it's from his book, I'm talking about it because it worked for me. After recovering from major depressive disorder and anxiety disorder NOS, I still wasn't happy. I certainly wasn't unhappy -- it's almost impossible to be depressed with all that exercise and therapy and bright light and activities I was doing. And it's hard to be anxious when you learn a classically conditioned behavior of taking deep breaths every time you start to tense up and worry. But where was the satisfaction and the occasional euphoria that I used to have? I wasn't getting it by chasing pleasure. I mean, I got it on friday and saturday nights when partying with my friends... as long as we were all in mostly good moods. But what about the rest of the week? Therapy was great for going from miserable to neutral. But going from neutral to happy requires the stuff I talked about above.

So, what do you think of that? Still interested in tweaking those neurotransmitters? I won't discourage you from doing it -- I stayed on my antidepressant for months after I'd already recovered from MDD and the anxiety disorder. I still have a 2-month supply in my room, just in case. And I still take a stimulant for ADHD, since ADHD doesn't go away.

But you know that a pill isn't going to give you that unmistakeable "my-life-is-going-great" feeling more often, right? You know you have to actually make your life better in order to get that feeling more often?
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#10 Raza

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Posted 14 June 2012 - 12:32 PM

I've gotten barely-controllable laughing fits from borderline GHB overdoses before. The uncomfortable kind, not the dangerous range. This state is a bit too unpleasant to be useful for this purpose, but it does direct us to the GABA-b and/or GHB receptors.

My bet is that GABA-b stimulation lowers the impulse threshold for laughter, as it does for most nonverbal mood-reactions.

LSD is also great for hours of laughing, if your trip goes in that direction.

Edited by Raza, 14 June 2012 - 12:34 PM.


#11 Thorsten3

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Posted 14 June 2012 - 12:43 PM

I agree with what you say about LSD as I have experienced that myself but I have never found that with GHB. GHB, for me, was a selfish drug and wasn't something that would cause me to become lighthearted and go in search of humour. I quite happily got high on my own for 95% of the time with that drug. Even when I was using it with other people though it was all about music, sex and clubs. So like most drugs that give euphoria, it gave a sense of unity in that respect but it never came across as something that would promote lighthearted humour.

LSD, on the other hand, definitely quips your interest in what is around you resulting in things that are usually normal becoming absurdly funny. Unfortunately for me, this was only the first hour or so of my trip (I've only done one), the rest of the trip though was a horrible, earth shattering, ego destroying train wreck. I couldn't wait for it to be over and for normality to return.

I think to answer the question of this thread, neurotransmitters aren't really all that important. What matters is being around people who's company you enjoy. You feel good around them and they stimulate you. If you can stimulate each other intellectually and you feel good together you should in theory have a great time together and the potential for these side splitting moments increase.

Edited by Thorsten2, 14 June 2012 - 12:49 PM.


#12 Raza

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Posted 14 June 2012 - 01:03 PM

It's a dose thing with the G. Ordinary (fun) doses don't usually make me laugh, either - it's only ever been when I took just a little too much.

I think there must definitely be receptors whose activation encourages laughter (too many drugs influence this for there not to be), but I can't think of any neurotransmitters that do it as a whole, no.

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#13 kurdishfella

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Posted 07 February 2021 - 06:34 PM

nervous laughter activates dopamine which activates NADA that activates cb1 receptor
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