ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2017
Social Laughter Triggers Endogenous Opioid Release in Humans.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 80 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
80 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 209 citations in OpenAlex.
- The neuroscience of social feelings: mechanisms of adaptive social functioning.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2021Pooled it
- Laughter Exercise for Symptomatic Improvement in Dry Eye Following Cataract Surgery: A Randomized Controlled Trial.Clinical ophthalmology (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2026Trial
- Assessing the effect of Loving-Kindness Meditation on pain and social well-being using a randomized controlled trial design.PloS one · 2026Trial
- Opioids and social bonding: Effect of naltrexone on feelings of social connection and ventral striatum activity to close others.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2020Trial
- Naltrexone alters responses to social and physical warmth: implications for social bonding.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2019Trial
- Expressing emotions through music.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Review
- Humor Training and Diabetes: An Adjunct to Treatment.American journal of lifestyle medicine · 2026Article
- Endogenous opioid system modulates proximal and distal threat signals in the human brain.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Association between social activities and cardiovascular diseases: evidence from the CHARLS database.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Adequacy of pain management and its predictors following cesarean section: a longitudinal data analysis using a generalized estimating equation model.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Aberrant type 2 dopamine and mu-opioid receptor availability in autism spectrum disorder.European journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging · 2026Article
- Social exclusion selectively attenuates social reward processing but promotes prosocial evaluations.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Article
- Concerning the circadian rhythms of prolactin, its secretion timing, and regulation of the affiliative mind.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2025Review
- Pleasurable music activates cerebral µ-opioid receptors: a combined PET-fMRI study.European journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging · 2025Article
- Laughter as a Subject and a Tool for Interdisciplinary Investigations in Philosophy and Neuroscience.The European journal of neuroscience · 2025Article
- Adverse childhood friendship and depression in later life: findings from a national survey in China.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- How can we use social network analysis to better understand Chimpanzee and Gorilla sociality and communication?Animal cognition · 2025Review
- Childhood family environment and μ-opioid receptor availability in vivo in adulthood.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Liberating the mental health and wellbeing benefits of laughing alone: a new taxonomic model and scoping review for future research.Discover mental health · 2025Review
- Why friendship and loneliness affect our health.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
20 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The size of human social networks significantly exceeds the network that can be maintained by social grooming or touching in other primates. It has been proposed that endogenous opioid release after social laughter would provide a neurochemical pathway supporting long-term relationships in humans (Dunbar, 2012), yet this hypothesis currently lacks direct neurophysiological support. We used PET and the μ-opioid-receptor (MOR)-specific ligand [
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.