A PRIEST, a horse and a gelatologist walk into a bar… OK, while this is clearly the start of a terrible joke, gelatology – the study of laughter – is a serious business.
Laughter researchers, gelatologists, are beginning to work out why we laugh. They have uncovered how our brains “get” a joke (it is to do with the prefrontal cortex region of the brain) and how laughter really is the best medicine. Now they are looking at the roots of laughter.
In ground-breaking laughter research published in The Quarterly Review of Biology in December last year, Matthew Gervais and David…
