Man who measures laughs
To measure laughter, he attaches sensors on the skin of a tested 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.
“I have a theory that humour detected in the brain gets directly discharged through the movement of diaphragm,” he said. By checking the movement of the diaphragm and other parts of the body, it will be possible to see if a person is only pretending to laugh while also distinguishing different types of laughter such as derision and cynicism, Kimura said.
So says a February 22, 2008 Agence France-Presse report about Kansai University professor Yoji Kimura.
(Thanks to investigator Mark Schreiber for bringing this to our
attention.)