Why Do We Laugh? The Origins of the Social Brain

CYCLE: Reasons and Passions. From Classical Greece to Neuroscience
SPEAKER: Fausto Caruana
DATE: Thursday, February 12, 6:00 PM

Why do we laugh? Since ancient Greece, philosophers have proposed different hypotheses to explain what is probably our most frequent behavior. However, they have almost systematically made two main mistakes. The first is linking laughter to humor. The second is assuming that laughter is a uniquely human behavior. More than two thousand years after those original formulations, neuroscience and ethology now offer an alternative, naturalistic, and evolutionary history. A story that begins with the idea that our species is not the only one that laughs, and that in fact, it is by studying animal laughter that we can answer the opening question, taking us back to the origins of our social brain.

Fausto Caruana is a cognitive neuroscientist at the Institute of Neuroscience of CNR in Parma. His research focuses on the neural bases of motor and emotional behavior, as well as its perceptual processing mediated by the mirror neuron system. He conducts interdisciplinary research collaborations with scholars from other disciplines, including neurology, ethology, and philosophy of mind. He has given invited lectures at prestigious national and international institutes and conferences on both neuroscientific and theoretical topics and is the author of four books on motor cognition and affective behavior.

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