Words vanish the instant they’re spoken, and no skeleton can tell us when our ancestors first started talking. So how can ...

Speech leaves no fossils, and complex language exists only in our own species. But we've found a 15-million-year-old clue in an unexpected place: our laughter. Unlike speech, laughter is shared by all ...

Laughter is a universal social signal that connects us with others, but the brain regions underlying laughter are not well understood, in part because it's hard to elicit genuine laughter in the lab.

A laugh may signal mockery, humor, joy or simply be a response to tickling, but each kind of laughter conveys a wealth of auditory and social information. These different kinds of laughter also spark ...

Though it may seem like a paradox, children do not laugh for joy. Scientific studies, including my own, show that there is something much deeper than joy or mirth in a child’s laughter. Adults’ ...