….We would not have spent the past 6 years of laboratory effort to study the laughter-type 50 kHz vocalization, if we did not have the working hypothesis that rat chirps have some kind of ancestral relationship to the playful laughter of the young of our own species…. We currently know so little about human laughter despite Robert Provine’s (2000) seminal efforts. We now know that placing psychostimulants such as amphetamine into the ventral striatum (nucleus accumbens) promotes vigorous 50 kHz chirping …. It is intriguing that mirth provokes robust arousal of this same brain area in humans …. Perhaps, there is a homology here that will give us some lasting information about human joy …. We know that young animals we have tickled become remarkably friendly toward us—apparently socially bonded. They actively chirp when we approach their cages. They unambiguously choose to spend time with older animals that chirp a lot compared to those that do not…. The response can be readily bred for … providing opportunities to identify genes that promote happiness and sadness ….
…from:
"Affective consciousness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans”
by Jaak Panksepp (Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403, USA Falk Center for Molecular Therapeutics, Department of Biomedical Engineering, McCormick School of Engineerings, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA)
Consciousness and Cognition
Volume 14, Issue 1 , March 2005, Pages 30-80
Neurobiology of Animal Consciousness
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