What starts as a simple knock-knock joke can light up different regions of your brain, depending on whether you find the gag funny or just understand it. 51动漫s gained a better appreciation of this process after monitoring people while they watched the popular sitcom Seinfeld.
Several parts of the cortex, the brain鈥檚 outermost layer, are involved in processing humour, but at the University of Western Ontario in Canada and her colleagues thought that the role of another brain region was potentially being overlooked.
Deep in the brain is a structure called the striatum, which was once thought to be primarily involved in motor functions. More recently, we have learned it is connected to almost every region of the cortex and is practically 鈥渋nvolved in everything鈥�, says MacDonald.
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One part of the striatum, the dorsal striatum, contributes to our working memory as well as how we process language and ambiguity, while the ventral striatum is critical for reward processing and enjoyment. The researchers therefore thought that the dorsal striatum might be involved in understanding a joke, while the ventral striatum might regulate our appreciation of it.
To put this to the test, they used functional magnetic resonance imaging scans to monitor the brains of 15 women and 11 men, average age 22, as they heard and rated different jokes. For example, 鈥渄o you know why cannibals don鈥檛 like clowns? Because they taste funny!鈥� The participants鈥� brain activity was also monitored while they watched an episode of Seinfeld.
The results show that the researchers were partly correct in their predictions: the ventral striatum is responsible for us appreciating a joke, but both the dorsal and ventral striatum are involved in understanding it.
By processing ambiguity, the dorsal striatum may help people interpret the meaning of a joke, says , a neuroscientist and comedian in Los Angeles.
The ventral striatum is involved in motivation, and therefore it may help people understand jokes by pushing them to comprehend the humour, says MacDonald. Even if a gag doesn鈥檛 make you laugh out loud, 鈥渢hat feeling of mirth that you get when you 鈥榞et the joke鈥� is rewarding enough to be motivation鈥�, says MacDonald.
One of the researchers 鈥� , also at the University of Western Ontario 鈥� is particularly interested in the medical implications of humour comprehension. She is studying the social and emotional symptoms of neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson鈥檚 disease, one of which can be difficulty understanding humour.
To learn more, Prenger is repeating the experiment in people with Parkinson鈥檚. 鈥淭hese are symptoms that really affect quality of life and relationships, so it鈥檚 a really pertinent thing to study and one that has been overlooked,鈥� she says.
The Journal of Neuroscience
