ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2022
The web of laughter: frontal and limbic projections of the anterior cingulate cortex revealed by cortico-cortical evoked potential from sites eliciting laughter.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Methodologies to detect cortico-cortical evoked potentials: a systematic review.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Pooled it
- Directed cortico-limbic dialogue in the human brain.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Laughter as a Subject and a Tool for Interdisciplinary Investigations in Philosophy and Neuroscience.The European journal of neuroscience · 2025Article
- Neural processing of laughter in depression.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- In sync through laughter? An fNIRS hyperscanning study on neural synchrony and social connection.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- Anatomo-functional basis of emotional and motor resonance elicited by facial expressions.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2024Article
- Laughter-Induced Seizures: A Rare Type of Reflex Epilepsy.Journal of epilepsy research · 2024Article
- Aberrant structural and functional alterations in postpartum depression: a combined voxel-based morphometry and resting-state functional connectivity study.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
- Cracking the laugh code: laughter through the lens of biology, psychology and neuroscience.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- The naturalistic approach to laughter in humans and other animals: towards a unified theory.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
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9 authors.
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Abstract
According to an evolutionist approach, laughter is a multifaceted behaviour affecting social, emotional, motor and speech functions. Albeit previous studies have suggested that high-frequency electrical stimulation (HF-ES) of the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC) may induce bursts of laughter-suggesting a crucial contribution of this region to the cortical control of this behaviour-the complex nature of laughter implies that outward connections from the pACC may reach and affect a complex network of frontal and limbic regions. Here, we studied the effective connectivity of the pACC by analysing the cortico-cortical evoked potentials elicited by single-pulse electrical stimulation of pACC sites whose HF-ES elicited laughter in 12 patients. Once these regions were identified, we studied their clinical response to HF-ES, to reveal the specific functional target of pACC representation of laughter. Results reveal that the neural representation of laughter in the pACC interacts with several frontal and limbic regions, including cingulate, orbitofrontal, medial prefrontal and anterior insular regions-involved in interoception, emotion, social reward and motor behaviour. These results offer neuroscientific support to the evolutionist approach to laughter, providing a possible mechanistic explanation of the interplay between this behaviour and emotion regulation, speech production and social interactions. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cracking the laugh code: laughter through the lens of biology, psychology and neuroscience'.
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