The first time, the laughter came in bursts of up to 40 seconds while a magnetic coil pulsed over his head. The second time, seven months later, it did not even get that far. Within about five minutes of restarting the same brain stimulation treatment, the 48-year-old stroke patient felt a strong urge to laugh, and his doctors shut the machine off.
That return visit is one of the most telling details in a case series published Sept. 4 in Frontiers in Psychiatry. Neurologists Shusheng Jiao and Xiuhong Xu of Bethune International Peace Hospital in Shijiazhuang, China, describe two men who began laughing involuntarily during repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, or rTMS, used to help their arms recover after stroke.
