Validation of laughter for diagnosis and evaluation of depression

Navarro, Jorge; Moral, Raquel del; Alonso, Manuel Francisco García; Loste, P.; Campayo, Javier García; Lahoz-Beltrá, Rafael; Marijuán, Pedro C.

doi:10.1016/j.jad.2014.02.035

Cited by 16 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 15 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Thus, depressed males suffer the full blunt of the social stigma, while females may feel less socially pressed and freer to express their depressed state or not. The gender aspects of depression include some other complexities derived from the different prevalence of the disorder, the different appreciation of humor between the sexes, and the differences involved in neuroanatomic-connectomic matters, as discussed in [30]. In any case, very clear indications of gender differences have surfaced in our two studies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 62%

“…Our analytical focus in the present study will be specifically on entropy, complementing the previous study already mentioned [30]. In that work, we found that amongst the 10 acoustic variables considered for each plosive, three of them (energy, entropy, and F 0 ) had the highest discriminating power.…”

Section: The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 53%

“…Laughter is then spontaneously produced by the subject to display his/her own behavioral competence in an instinctive way. Powerful neurodynamic, neuromolecular, and physiological resources have been internally mobilized without implying any extra computational-cognitive burden upon the subject's ongoing consciousness processes [30]. This role of laughter makes a lot of sense in the really complex social world that the "talkative" human brain has to confront, with a myriad of cognitive, behavioral, and relational problems.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, to the extent to which laughter reflects with some accuracy the specific mental condition of individuals [29], a better understanding of the whole sound structures of laughter could have relevant implications in mental-health research, beyond the present therapeutic applications-as, for instance, in diagnostics and prognosis, at detecting the differences between healthy subjects and patients, and at following the recovery progresses of patients. At least previous work by these authors [30] has demonstrated that simple proof based on laughter analysis can be useful in establishing the diagnostics of depression patients and gauging the severity of the disorder.…”

Section: Biomedical Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…All of the individuals were Spanish and none of them was suffering any mental illness that prevented the realization of the task, so they could understand the humour sketches presented and complete the questionnaires. We followed the inclusion criteria described in [30] and the protocol was approved by the Regional Ethics Committee of Aragon.…”

Section: Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

The Entropy of Laughter: Discriminative Power of Laughter’s Entropy in the Diagnosis of Depression

Navarro

Moral

Cuesta-Álvaro

et al. 2016

Entropy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:Laughter is increasingly present in biomedical literature, both in analytical neurological aspects and in applied therapeutic fields. The present paper, bridging between the analytical and the applied, explores the potential of a relevant variable of laughter's acoustic signature-entropy-in the detection of a widespread mental disorder, depression, as well as in gauging the severity of its diagnostic. In laughter, the Shannon-Wiener entropy of the distribution of sound frequencies, which is one of the key features distinguishing its acoustic signal from the utterances of spoken language, has not been a specific focus of research yet, although the studies of human language and of animal communication have pointed out that entropy is a very important factor regarding the vocal/acoustic expression of emotions. As the experimental survey of laughter in depression herein undertaken shows, it was possible to discriminate between patients and controls with an 82.1% accuracy just by using laughter's entropy and by applying the decision tree procedure. These experimental results, discussed in the light of the current research on laughter, point to the relevance of entropy in the spontaneous bona fide extroversion of mental states toward other individuals, as the signal of laughter seems to imply. This is in line with recent theoretical approaches that rely on the optimization of a neuro-informational free energy (and associated entropy) as the main "stuff" of brain processing.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 62%

Section: The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 53%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Biomedical Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations