Tag Archives: Kansas

Laughter May Be the Brain’s Best Medicine

Man and woman laughing with a therapy dog wearing a Doctor Bark vest

After a car accident in 2023, the therapists of a brain injured 19-year-old Kansas teen had an unconventional tool ready: dad jokes. The groan-worthy punchlines weren’t just comic relief, they were medicine. And a growing body of science backs that up.

Research indexed in the National Library of Medicine confirms that laughter triggers real, measurable changes in the injured brain. A 2023 PLOS ONE meta-analysis found that a single bout of spontaneous laughter slashes cortisol, the body’s chief stress hormone, by up to 36.7%. Since high cortisol after TBI is linked to poorer survival outcomes, anything that lessens it matters enormously. A 2017 PET-imaging study in the Journal of Neuroscience showed that laughing with others floods the brain’s reward centers with natural opioids, promoting calm and connection.

New 2026 research adds another dimension. A comprehensive neurodevelopmental analysis published in May 2026 found that processing humor is genuinely cognitively demanding – activating working memory and the frontal lobes in ways that stimulate neuroplasticity, essentially giving the recovering brain a workout. Separately, a University of Vienna brain-scanning study published in January 2026 in Frontiers in Neuroscience, and available in the National Library of Medicine database, found that laughter behavior directly predicted bonding, pro-sociality, and social liking between people – outcomes that matter deeply to TBI survivors rebuilding their lives.

As vis turns out, the best medicine may truly be free.

Kansas Official Honored for Championing Brain Injury Survivors

On April 17, 2026, Kansas Secretary of the Department for Aging and Disability Services Laura Howard was named the 2026 Brain Injury Champion for her work that has helped thousands of families in the State navigate life after a brain injury. Howard was recognized at the Brain Injury Association of Kansas & Greater Kansas City Annual Professional Conference in Topeka, a distinction that places her at the center of one of the most important disability policy conversations in the State.

As a gubernatorially-appointed cabinet secretary, Howard oversees Kansas’s Medicaid Brain Injury Waiver, a program that funds rehabilitation support for brain injury survivors. Under her leadership, the waiver was expanded to cover a broader range of injuries and now includes children under 16, nearly doubling the number of people it helps. Even Kansas Governor Laura Kelly took notice, publicly praising Howard’s “commitment to supporting Kansans with brain injuries and improving access to care.”