Can we fake laughter?
New research from the Royal Holloway at the University of London has discovered that the human brain can distinguish between genuine and fake laughter.
The 20th of March may have been the International Day of Happiness but it seems as if the brain is too savvy to be fooled into fake chuckling. The study was led by Dr Carolyn McGettigan who tested groups of people listening to two separate sounds. One was people laughing at funny YouTube videos while the other was forced laughter.
The results were that the part of the brain that deals with trying to understand emotion was activated by the fake chuckles and different neurological responses were created. This suggests that the brain knows the difference and looks to decide why the laughter is fake.