Thursday, December 2, 2010

Human Responce to Jokes

Scientists at LaughLab carried out a brain scan (using a technique known as Magnetic Resonance Imaging) of people listening to some jokes. The results were amazing. They showed that there is a very precise area of the brain involved in understanding why a joke is funny.

The area of the brain which reacts to jokes is mainly located towards the back of the frontal lobes. Interestingly, this fits in with other research suggesting that people who have damaged this part of the brain often lose their sense of humour.

But why should this section of the brain be so important to our sense of humour?

The Prefrontal cortex plays a vital role in the type of flexible thinking needed to understand a joke. It makes sense of the punchline and produces a strong sense of surprise.

In the NMI scanner presented to people with the initial part of jokes and then the punchlines, and compared activity in their brains with them simply reading unfunny sentences. The results were clear - the punchlines caused lots of activation in the prefrontal cortex at the front of the brain - without this part of the brain we simply wouldn't find jokes funny.

People who took part in the LaughLab test were also asked to answer questions that involve making various estimates, such as:

How many words are there on one page of a typical paperback novel?

A) Under 500
B) 500 - 600
C) 600 - 700
D) 700 - 800
E) Over 800

Research suggests that people who are good at this type of question (the correct answer is under 500) tend to have good frontal lobe activation, whilst people who make incorrect estimates - do not. Interestingly, people who tended to answer this question correctly tended to prefer relatively complex jokes, such as…

A scientist and a philosopher were being chased by a hungry lion. The scientist made some quick calculations, he said "its no good trying to outrun it, its catching up". The philosopher kept a little ahead and replied " I am not trying to outrun the lion, I am trying to out run you"!

Whereas people who answered incorrectly, tended to like more straightforward jokes, such as…

Which day of the week do fish hate?.......
Fry-Day.

This sort of data gives us important insights into the way in which our brains affect our sense of humour.

Reference:

What Makes Jokes Funny? http://www.aboutjokes.net/origin.html

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