alexa09's blog

Laughter can be heard during the most inappropriate times; during a funeral, without any noticeable reason, or after a very bad joke. Others may wonder why a person would laugh without what people would consider as normal stimuli for laughter. Most would consider tickling, a funny joke, or a release in tension as normal stimuli for laughter. Is a person rebelling against social boundaries and expectations or being insensitive when he or she laughs as he or she administers shocks to someone next door? Parts of the limbic system are involved in laughter. The limbic system is a primitive part of the brain that is involved in emotions and helps us with basic functions necessary for survival.

Dreaming is considered an activity that takes place when one enters the REM cycle during sleep. (1) Often times, most people do not remember their dreams, but it seems that as long as one sleeps long enough to enter the REM cycle, everyone dreams. Dreams are thought to be based on one's recent past experiences or declarative memories. What happens when one does not remember one's past experiences? Do they dream?

Those who suffer from amnesia have damaged their hippocampus. The damage can result from head trauma, Alzheimer's, anoxia (oxygen deprivation), or encephalitis (acute inflammation of the brain). (2) The hippocampus is in the temporal lobe of the brain and is part of the limbic system, which includes parts of the cerebral cortex that are responsible for manifesting emotions. (3) The general thought of the role of the hippocampus in memory is the hippocampus is responsible for creating new memories of experienced events. Some also believe the hippocampus plays a role in declarative memory, a component of memory for facts. (4) When there is damage to the hippocampus, it becomes very difficult to form new memories and to access memories prior to the damage; therefore amnesiacs do not have information in their brain about their recent past experiences to dream about.