Japanese professor Yoji Kimura believes laughter is a weapon that in healthy doses can end the world's wars. To measure it, the expert on communications has invented a machine to chart out laughter -- and a new unit of "aH" to calculate it.

"We have found that children laugh more freely, releasing 10 aH per second, which is about twice as much as an adult," Kimura, a professor at Kansai University in the western city of Osaka, told reporters on Friday.

"Adults tend to calculate whether it's appropriate to laugh and under those restraints they eventually forget how," he said.

"Laughing is like a restart function on a computer. Laughing freely is very important in the course of human evolution," he said.

Kimura, who believes in "a shift from a century of wars to a century of humour and tolerance," has studied the science of laughter for decades in Osaka, the hub of Japan's stand-up comedy scene.

In his theory, human laughter is produced in four successive emotional stages -- letting loose, then deviating¹ from the norm, followed by freely laughing and then having the laughter overflow².

"I believe there is a circuit in the human brain that creates laughter through these steps to the stage of overflowing," Kimura said confidently. "Understanding this mechanism³ is the door to resolving one secret of human beings."

To measure laughter, he attaches sensors⁴ on the skin of a tested subject's stomach, particularly the diaphragm, and detects muscle movements.

"I have a theory that humour detected in the brain gets directly discharged through the movement of diaphragm," he said.

By checking the movement of the diaphragm and other parts of the body, it will be possible to see if a person is only pretending to laugh while also distinguishing different types of laughter such as derision and cynicism, Kimura said.

Kimura wants to make the measuring device as small as a mobile phone and possibly market it as a health and amusement gadget⁵.

Kimura said he planned to present his findings this summer to the US-based International Society for Humor Studies, adding that he looked forward to looking at differences in laughter internationally.

在日本教授木村誉二看来，笑好比一种武器，“适度的”笑具有结束战争的力量。但如何对“笑”进行测量呢？这位沟通学专家发明出一种“测笑”图仪——及其测算单位“aH”。

来自日本西部城市大阪的关西大学的木村教授于上周五接受记者的采访时说：“我们发现，儿童笑起来更加无拘无束，每秒钟能释放10aH，为成年人的两倍。”

他说：“成年人往往会考虑何时该笑，何时不该笑，在这些因素的制约下，他们最终就会忘记如何去笑。”

他说：“笑就像电脑的重启功能，自由自在地笑对于人类的进化过程十分重要。”

大阪为日本的单口相声中心，数十年来，木村教授一直在此研究“笑”这门科学。他相信，（笑可以让）“一个充满战争的世界变为一个充满幽默而包容的世界”。

根据木村教授的理论，人的笑声主要经过四个相继的情绪阶段而产生，依次是放松、偏离常态、自由地笑，最后大笑。

木村教授自信地说：“我认为人脑中存在一个回路，能通过以上这几个步骤产生笑声。了解这一机制有助于我们解开人类自身的一大秘密。”

在“测笑”过程中，木村教授在试验对象的腹部（尤其是横膈膜位置）安置了传感器，以检测肌肉运动。

他说：“我有一个理论，在大脑中检测到的幽默能通过横膈膜的运动直接释放出来。”

通过检测横膈膜及身体其它部位的运动，能够判断一个人是否是假笑，同时还能辨别出不同类型的笑，比如嘲笑、冷笑等。

木村教授希望能将这种“测笑”装置制成手机大小，并将其作为一种健康娱乐的小玩意儿推向市场。

木村说，他计划于今年夏天向位于美国的国际幽默研究学会呈报将他的研究成果，他还希望自己能研究出世界各地笑声的不同。