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Abstract:
Prologue: On the discovery of "laughter" in rats
Laughter is a simple and robust indicator of joyful social
affect. All too commonly it is considered to be a unique
emotional capacity of humans and perhaps a few other higher
primates. If more primitive mammals also exhibit such emotional
responses, it would suggest that joyful affect emerged much
earlier within mammalian brain evolution than is generally
believed. In this chapter we summarize the discovery of a
primitive form of "laughter" in rats, and we provide convergent
evidence and argumentation that a study of this response may help
us decipher the neural basis of joy and positive emotional
consciousness within the mammalian brain.
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