The Funny Factor (page 2 of 4)

Flexing Your Humor Muscles

The scientific hunt for the brain's humor muscles begins with (what else?) an academic hypothesis of humor. It's called incongruity, and it's a widely accepted idea about how humor works. For example, take this joke (please): Why won't sharks attack lawyers? Professional courtesy.

The punch line makes no sense at first and briefly trips us up. That's incongruity. To get the joke, we rifle through our mental files on language, syntax and social know-how. Then, in a flash, we mentally shift gears and see the story in a new light. We delight in the surprising logic, especially if it reveals a rarely spoken truth about human nature. Then we laugh. We do all that in a fraction of a second -- no mean feat, even by the high standards of the human brain.

Neuroscientists suspect that separate humor muscles are responsible for each of these mental tasks. By exercising them, we learn and develop. "Each humor event you experience makes you grow a little bit -- as the brain has expanded and taken on new connections," explains William Fry, MD, a pioneering humor researcher and professor emeritus of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine.

In studying patients with brain injuries, neurologists came to suspect that the right frontal lobe was critical for appreciating what's comical. In 1999, Donald Stuss, PhD, and Prathiba Shammi, PhD, two neuropsychologists at Baycrest, a hospital and research institute in Toronto, tested that idea. They identified 21 patients with damage limited to either their right frontal lobes or another brain region; then they had the patients read humorous statements. (Example: A sign in a Hong Kong tailor's shop read "Please have a fit upstairs." Another example: A sign in a Tokyo hotel read "Guests are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid.")

Only patients with a damaged right prefrontal cortex didn't get the humor at all. The patients still appreciated the slapstick, though. All this means is that the right frontal humor muscle is exercised only during so-called thoughtful forms of humor.

To locate other humor muscles, neuroscientists like Allman have recently begun placing healthy people in functional MRI scanners, then showing them cartoons or television sitcoms. The scans reveal blood flow to several different brain regions, which shows how hard they're working.

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One of my most difficult tasks as a flight attendant is to enforce rules while keeping customers happy. The electronic equipment that comes on board creates the greatest challenge. I walk the aisle asking passengers to turn off computers, electronic games and cell phones, which can create interference in communications between the pilot and the air traffic control tower. During one landing, a man persistently kept his cell phone at his ear. I confronted him and said, "Sir, you cannot talk on your phone until we reach the gate." "I am not talking," he replied. "I'm listening."

-- Mary E. Olthoff