Laughter and neurotransmitters?

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ASDMommyASDKid
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20 Oct 2014, 11:15 am

I am wondering someone here has a kid who have laughter-type meltdowns and might have insight for me.

What I mean by laughter meltdowns is when he/she is giggling and it appears like he/she has as little control as one might in a more obvious anger/sadness type meltdown. It is kind of like when a kid with ASD giggles when in trouble, but more like a meltdown than just an unexpected/inappropriate response.

My son isn't having them in direct relation with stress these days, but at the end of the day, when he should be sleeping. I am going to start tracking them to see if they are more common on days with more going on than usual.

It may be an ADD thing for all I know, b/c my husband will have very rare (like once a year) giggle-fits over silly words when he is super sleepy. He is more ADD than ASD, and with him it is very rare and I tried to get him to articulate more about it, but it the cause is not very clear to him. I asked my son to try to articulate what is going on, but he can't tell me much about it, other than he wants to share laughs.

What I am wondering is if anyone here knows whether the laughter and giggles is asymptom of some kind of neurotransmitter depletion or if it is more like a stim and it is a symptom of his brain trying to re-regulate.

I hope this does not sound really weird.



Dmarcotte
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20 Oct 2014, 3:51 pm

So if I understand you correctly he starts laughing/ giggling and just can't stop - even though he wants to stop?

I am afraid I don't have any advice - I have had this myself upon occasion - usually I am just tired and stressed and it is a way to release tension. There will be a word or phrase or commercial that makes me laugh and I can't seem to stop for a couple of minutes - that doesn't sound like very long, but it can seem like it when it is happening to me.

I know laughing releases certain hormones (though I can't remember which ones) so you may be on the right track of being a way for his brain to reset.

Sorry I don't have any helpful advice.


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ASDMommyASDKid
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20 Oct 2014, 4:28 pm

Dmarcotte wrote:
So if I understand you correctly he starts laughing/ giggling and just can't stop - even though he wants to stop?

I am afraid I don't have any advice - I have had this myself upon occasion - usually I am just tired and stressed and it is a way to release tension. There will be a word or phrase or commercial that makes me laugh and I can't seem to stop for a couple of minutes - that doesn't sound like very long, but it can seem like it when it is happening to me.

I know laughing releases certain hormones (though I can't remember which ones) so you may be on the right track of being a way for his brain to reset.

Sorry I don't have any helpful advice.


Part of it is that he is telling himself/us what he thinks are jokes. Then he will laugh, tell more jokes until it runs its course. The reason I think it is unintentional is that the times he has done it, he actually volunteered to go to bed a half an hour or more earlier than his actual bedtime. That seems to indicate he knows he is tired and wants to sleep, no?

Then me or my husband will stay with him a bit to help him calm his brain, and then we go to bed. He apparently can't fall asleep and then comes into our room, maybe a half an hour later, sometimes less. He starts talking and giggling and despite our insistence that he go to bed, he stays, talks and giggles.

We offer to let him calm his brain, again; my husband escorts him back to bed, but stays giggly the whole time and he keeps returning, all giggly and talky. Then it runs its course and he leaves voluntarily. Last night he made it a point of apologizing for not being compliant, to both my husband and me, individually. If you knew my son, you would know this never happens.

So TL:DR that combined with the fact that he has had giggle-meldowns before, makes me think it has to do with neurotransmitters or, as you say ,maybe hormones. I was curious if anyone else had this issue and how they dealt with it, but it doesn't look like a common issue.



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20 Oct 2014, 4:41 pm

I think I know exactly what you are talking about (with my kids, the almost-creepy laughter is accompanied with super hyperactivity and destructive behaviour). My theory is also over-tiredness. It tends to occur in the evening, or with my younger son, in the middle of the night when he's not sleeping. My younger son is an absolutely TERRIBLE sleeper- he is regularly up at night, and when he is, he is very hyperactive and destructive (as I said) and also does this laughter thing.

In my younger son, this has been classified as a type of seizure (part of his complex partial seizures- which are very complex). He has several forms of epilepsy (and that plus autism ,which is always present in him)- it's difficult for his neuro to distinguish between some behaviours being epileptic and not. I have always wondered about whether or not this is actually epilepsy, because my older son does it too sometimes, and he doesn't have seizures, as far as we know.

(ETA) With my older son, nobody has a clue why- this is just chalked up to "he's severely autistic- of course he is weird". I have another friend whose kid does this sometimes too. With our non-verbal kids, sometimes we wonder if maybe they just found something really funny... It's unusual because they're normally much more solemn , but who knows maybe it's a hilarious inside joke.


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ASDMommyASDKid
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20 Oct 2014, 8:38 pm

WelcomeToHolland wrote:
I think I know exactly what you are talking about (with my kids, the almost-creepy laughter is accompanied with super hyperactivity and destructive behaviour). My theory is also over-tiredness. It tends to occur in the evening, or with my younger son, in the middle of the night when he's not sleeping. My younger son is an absolutely TERRIBLE sleeper- he is regularly up at night, and when he is, he is very hyperactive and destructive (as I said) and also does this laughter thing.

In my younger son, this has been classified as a type of seizure (part of his complex partial seizures- which are very complex). He has several forms of epilepsy (and that plus autism ,which is always present in him)- it's difficult for his neuro to distinguish between some behaviours being epileptic and not. I have always wondered about whether or not this is actually epilepsy, because my older son does it too sometimes, and he doesn't have seizures, as far as we know.

(ETA) With my older son, nobody has a clue why- this is just chalked up to "he's severely autistic- of course he is weird". I have another friend whose kid does this sometimes too. With our non-verbal kids, sometimes we wonder if maybe they just found something really funny... It's unusual because they're normally much more solemn , but who knows maybe it's a hilarious inside joke.


Yeah, that sounds very similar. My son has also been a poor sleeper, until the last year or so, and you know, until lately. Maybe it is sleepiness.



setai
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21 Oct 2014, 12:00 pm

My son sometimes gets super giggly before he goes to bed or after he goes to bed. He is a giggly guy in general, but more so on these occasions. We just thought it was him fighting sleep with talking to himself and making himself laugh. Also sometimes he gets a crazy burst of energy and runs back and forth for 5 minutes or so, it has the same maniac feel. We can tell he is tired because he is still little enough to get a sweaty head when he gets sleepy. It only happens at night. I am not ASD but I remember getting the giggles as a little kid when I got too tired. Most of the time when I was little sleep would just wash over me but sometimes you would get this loopy almost drunken giggle state. Afterwards you would just zonk out from being exhausted.

My guy is a great sleeper and always has been, so I think it probably has more to do with getting too tired versus a poor sleeper issue.