UC Irvine researcher Fan-Gang Zeng and Chinese colleagues studied brain scans of subjects as they
listened to spoken Mandarin. They found that the brain processes the music, or pitch, of the words first in the right hemisphere before the left side of the brain processes the semantics, or meaning, of the information.
Researchers at UCL (University College London) and Imperial College London have shown that positive sounds such as laughter or a triumphant "woo hoo!"
trigger a response in the listener's brain. This response occurs in the area of the brain that is activated when we smile, as though preparing our facial muscles to laugh.