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The main sign of a gelastic seizure is a sudden outburst of laughter with no apparent cause. [1] The laughter may sound unpleasant and sardonic rather than joyful. The outburst usually lasts for less than a minute. During or shortly after a seizure, an individual might display some twitching, strange eye movements, lip smacking, fidgeting or ...
Paradoxical laughter has been consistently identified as a recurring emotional-cognitive symptom in schizophrenia diagnosis. Closely linked to paradoxical laughter is the symptom; inappropriate affect, defined by the APA Dictionary of Psychology as "emotional responses that are not in keeping with the situation or are incompatible with expressed thoughts or wishes". [3]
The Tanganyika laughter epidemic of 1962 was an outbreak of mass hysteria—or mass psychogenic illness (MPI)—rumored to have occurred in or near the village of Kashasha on the western coast of Lake Victoria in Tanganyika (which, once united with Zanzibar, became the modern nation of Tanzania) near the border with Uganda.
An affected individual exhibits episodes of laughter, crying, anger or a combination of these without an apparent motivating stimulus or in response to stimuli that would not have elicited such an emotional response before the onset of their underlying neurologic disorder. In some patients, the emotional response is exaggerated in intensity but ...
Tanganyika laughter epidemic (1962) – began on January 30, 1962, at a mission-run boarding school for girls in Kashasha, Tanzania. The laughter started with three girls and spread haphazardly throughout the school, affecting 95 of the 159 pupils, aged 12–18. [30] [31] Symptoms lasted from a few hours to 16 days in those affected. The ...
The term hysterical, applied to an individual, can mean that they are emotional, irrationally upset, or frenzied. [32] When applied to a situation not involving panic, hysteria means that that situation is uncontrollably amusing – the connotation being that it invokes hysterical laughter. [32]
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The dancing was sometimes accompanied by stripping, howling, the making of obscene gestures, or reportedly laughing or crying to the point of death. Dancing mania was widespread over Europe. [13] Between the 15th and 19th centuries, instances of motor hysteria were common in nunneries. The young ladies that made up these convents were sometimes ...