Watching comedy was risky for one 43-year-old man. When he started laughing at a TV comedy show, his arms began to shake, and he felt as if his consciousness was "being vacuumed away." The episodes lasted 5 to 10 seconds and came about five times a day on average, depending on how long and how intense the shows were.
Doctors eventually recorded what was happening on video EEG, which tracks brain activity while filming the patient. The recordings showed seizure activity triggered by laughter. Writing in the Journal of Medical Case Reports in 2013, physicians from Reading Health System in West Reading, Pennsylvania, and other institutions said that, to the best of their knowledge, no such case had been reported in the medical literature.
