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aH, aH, aH to measure Ha, ha, ha
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Sat, Feb 23, 2008
The Straits Times
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TOKYO - JAPANESE professor Yoji Kimura believes laughter is a weapon that in healthy doses can end the world's wars. The only problem is finding a way to measure it.
So the expert on communications has invented a machine to chart out laughter - and a new unit of 'aH' to calculate it.
'We have found that children laugh more freely, releasing 10 aH per second, which is about twice as much as an adult,' said Professor Kimura of Kansai University in Osaka.
'Adults tend to calculate whether it's appropriate to laugh, and under those restraints they eventually forget how,' he said yesterday.
| 'Laughing is like a restart function on a computer. Laughing freely is very important in the course of human evolution,' said Prof Kimura, who believes in 'a shift from a century of wars to a century of humour and tolerance'. He has studied the science of laughter for decades in Osaka, the hub of Japan's stand-up comedy scene.
His theory is that human laughter is produced in four successive emotional stages - letting loose, then deviating from the norm, followed by freely laughing, and then having the laughter overflow.
'I believe there is a circuit in the human brain that creates laughter through these steps to the stage of overflowing,' he said.
To measure laughter, he attaches sensors on the skin of a subject's stomach, particularly the diaphragm, and detects muscle movements. The machine looks 3,000 times a second at electric elements normally produced in the body.
By checking the movement of the diaphragm and other parts of the body, it is possible to see if someone is just pretending to laugh and to distinguish different types of laughter, such as derision and cynicism, the professor said.
He hopes to market the device as a health and amusement gadget and plans to present his findings this summer to the International Society for Humour Studies.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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