Sophie Scott: Why we laugh
Sophie Scott: Dlaczego się śmiejemy
While exploring the neuroscience of speech and vocal behavior, Sophie Scott stumbled upon a surprising second vocation: making audiences laugh as a stand-up comic. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
to you today about laughter,
by thinking about the first time
I would've been about six.
Mniej więcej sześcioletnią.
doing something unusual,
robią coś niezwykłego,
laughing at, but I wanted in.
ale też chciałam dołączyć.
going, "Hoo hoo!" (Laughter)
i robiłam "ha ha". (Śmiech)
what they were laughing at
signs in toilets on trains
and could not do
about the English is, of course,
mamy wyrafinowane poczucie humoru.
sophisticated sense of humor.
understand anything of that.
nic z tego nie rozumiałam.
I've come to care about it again.
znów się nim zainteresowałam.
is just play some examples
people make and how odd that can be,
i jakie mogą być niezwykłe
laughter is as a sound.
than it is like speech.
odgłosy zwierząt niż mowę.
The first one is pretty joyful.
Pierwszy jest całkiem radosny.
where I'm just, like,
like he's breathing out.
(Laughter)
this is a human female laughing.
odd places in terms of making noises.
what is that?" in French.
I have no idea.
Ja przynajmniej nie mam pojęcia.
you have to look at a part of the body
trzeba spojrzeć na część ciała
don't normally spend much time looking at,
przez psychologów i neurologów,
wszyscy stale jej używamy.
your ribcage all the time.
at the moment with your ribcage,
the muscles between your ribs,
klatki piersiowej.
and contracting your ribcage,
around the outside of your chest
at that movement,
movement, so that's breathing.
completely differently.
something much more like this.
porusza się delikatnie,
movements of the ribcage
that can do this.
has a mortal enemy,
start to contract very regularly,
sort of zig-zagging,
the air out of you.
of making a sound.
na wydawanie dźwięku.
it's having the same effect.
efekt byłby ten sam.
Ha! -- gives you a sound.
you can get these spasms,
these -- (Wheezing) -- things happening.
there isn't very much,
nie znajdziecie zbyt wiele.
everything we think we know
to hear people to say
are the only animals that laugh.
throughout the mammals.
and well-observed in primates,
co widać wyraźnie u ludzi.
with things like tickling.
and all mammals play.
a wszystkie ssaki się bawią.
it's associated with interactions.
a lot of work on this,
wiele nad tym pracował,
more likely to laugh
than if you're on your own,
like conversation.
"When do you laugh?"
about humor and they'll talk about jokes.
humorze i żartach.
w towarzystwie.
they're laughing with their friends.
hardly ever actually laughing at jokes.
śmiejemy się z żartów.
that you understand them,
part of the same group as them.
that you like them.
as talking to them,
emocjonalną robotę.
of that emotional work for you.
has pointed out, as you can see here,
na filmach się śmiali
funny laughs at the start,
when I found my parents laughing,
behaviorally contagious effect.
off somebody else if you know them.
przez kontekst społeczny.
by this social context.
meaning of laughter
is different kinds of laughter,
odnośnie ludzkiej wokalizacji.
about how human beings vocalize
two kinds of laughs that we have.
for helpless, involuntary laughter,
którego nie da się powstrzymać
screaming about a silly song,
z powodu głupiej piosenki,
than some of that more polite
which isn't horrible laughter,
as part of their communicative act to you,
częścią komunikacji,
they are choosing to do this.
two different ways of vocalizing.
która jest częścią układu
are part of an older system
jak mowa, którą prezentuję teraz.
like the speech I'm doing now.
może mieć różne korzenie.
might actually have two different roots.
in more detail.
nagrać śmiech różnych osób
recordings of people laughing,
to make people laugh,
to produce more posed, social laughter.
śmiać się sztucznie.
you like your friend,
the joke's all that.
a couple of those.
this laughter is real laughter,
or more voluntary laughter?
S.S.: Pozowany? Pozowany.
Sophie Scott: Posed? Posed.
all they had to do was record me
something I knew she wanted to laugh at,
starając się nie zaśmiać.
are good at telling the difference
quite similar with chimpanzees.
if they're being tickled
jest inny niż społeczny.
something like that here,
being different from social laughter.
i o wyższym tonie.
They're higher in pitch.
from your lungs
niż gdy robisz to świadomie.
than you could ever produce voluntarily.
pitch my voice that high to sing.
świszczące dźwięki.
contractions and weird whistling sounds,
is extremely easy,
we might think it sounds a bit fake.
wydaje się trochę sztuczny.
To ważna wskazówka społeczna.
an important social cue.
to laugh in a lot of situations,
nasality in posed laughter,
słychać nosowe dźwięki,
if you were laughing involuntarily.
these two different sorts of things.
reakcji mózgu na śmiech.
to see how brains respond
this is a really boring experiment.
real and posed laughs.
it was a study on laughter.
dla odwrócenia uwagi.
to distract them,
i słuchać dźwięków.
is lying listening to sounds.
and when you hear posed laughter,
completely differently,
which lies in auditory cortex,
sektory słuchowe kory mózgowej
more to the real laughs,
na prawdziwy śmiech.
laughing involuntarily,
hear in any other context.
with greater auditory processing
laughing in a posed way,
associated with mentalizing,
somebody else is thinking.
which is completely boring
i niezbyt interesujące,
"A ha ha ha ha ha,"
why they're laughing.
to understand it in context,
at that point in time,
anything to do with you,
z czego śmieją się inni.
why those people are laughing.
at how people hear real and posed laughter
online z Royal Society.
we ran with the Royal Society,
two questions.
czy brzmi szczerze.
or posed do these laughs sound?
niebieski to pozowany.
and the posed laughs are shown in blue.
rozpoznawanie śmiechu.
and better at spotting real laughter.
they can't really hear the difference.
nie zauważą różnicy.
peak performance in this dataset
late 30s and early 40s.
by the time you hit puberty.
na początku dojrzewania.
by the time your brain has matured
przez cały wstęp do dorosłego życia.
throughout your entire early adult life.
not, what does the laughter sound like
jak brzmi śmiech:
or posed, but we say,
i jak bardzo jest zaraźliwy,
make you want to laugh,
we see a different profile.
when you hear laughter.
jest dla niej śmiech.
when I had no idea what was going on.
choć nie wiedziałam, o co chodzi.
śmiechem, niż pozowanym.
than the posed laughs,
less contagious to you.
really grumpy as we get older,
understand laughter better,
hearing people laugh to want to laugh.
nie wystarczy usłyszeć śmiech.
lay assumptions are incorrect,
there's even more to laughter
we should look at,
people are phenomenally nuanced
set of studies coming out
Roberta Levensona,
a longitudinal study with couples.
men and women, into the lab,
stressful conversations to have
so he can see them becoming stressed.
i obserwuje poziom stresu.
and he'll say to the husband,
that irritates you."
briefly, you and your partner --
more stressed as soon as that starts.
people become more stressed.
who manage that feeling of stress
positive emotions like laughter,
physically feeling better,
unpleasant situation better together,
in their relationship
at close relationships,
their emotions together.
to show that we like each other,
feel better together.
to be limited to romantic relationships.
do związków romantycznych.
going to be a characteristic
jak w przyjaźni,
such as you might have with friends,
young men in the former East Germany
zespołu heavy metalowego.
their heavy metal band,
and the mood is very serious,
jeśli chodzi o śmiech,
what happens in terms of laughter
and how that changes the mood.
i jak zmieniło nastrój.
Zaraz będzie mokry.
He's got swimming trunks on,
nawet bardzo.
They are already laughing, hard.
is it's all very serious
jest takie poważne,
as soon as he doesn't go through the ice,
and bone everywhere,
with him standing there going,
I think this is broken,"
That would be stressful.
biegał ze złamaną nogą,
with a visibly broken leg laughing,
"Chyba trzeba jechać do szpitala",
think we need to go to the hospital now,"
embarrassing, difficult situation,
actually enjoying there,
a really interesting use,
something like this happening
on the ice in our underpants.
a relative who was being a bit difficult,
just before the whole thing started
that happened in a 1970s sitcom,
I don't know why I'm doing this,
something from somewhere
together with me.
było podstawową reakcją.
to find some reason we can do this.
We're going to get through this.
are doing this all the time.
you don't even notice it.
rzadziej, niż istotnie.
how often they laugh,
when you laugh with people,
a really ancient evolutionary system
to make and maintain social bonds,
by utrzymać więzi społeczne,
to make ourselves feel better.
poprawiać sobie nastrój.
it's a really ancient behavior
to stare zachowanie,
and makes us feel better.
samopoczucie i poprawiać humor.
but mammals. (Laughter)
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Sophie Scott - Neuroscientist, stand-up comicWhile exploring the neuroscience of speech and vocal behavior, Sophie Scott stumbled upon a surprising second vocation: making audiences laugh as a stand-up comic.
Why you should listen
As deputy director of the University College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Sophie Scott seeks out the neurological basis of communication, whether it’s speech or vocalized emotion.
As a pioneering researcher in the science of laughter, she’s made some unexpected discoveries -- including that rats are ticklish, and that the one tactic that’s almost guaranteed to get someone to laugh is to show them someone else laughing. But as an occasional stand-up comedian with UCL’s Bright Club, she shows that she’s no slouch at getting laughs herself.
Sophie Scott | Speaker | TED.com