WHAT’S SO FUNNY?

John McCrone reviews recent research on humour

A. Making a rapid emotional assessment of the events of the moment is an extremely demanding job for the brain, animal or human. Energy and arousal levels may need to be retuned in the blink of an eye. These abrupt changes will produce either positive or negative feelings. The orbital cortex, the region that becomes active in Goel's experiment, seems the best candidate for the site that feeds such feelings into higher-level thought processes, with its close connections to the brain's sub-cortical arousal apparatus and centers of metabolic control.

B. All warm-blooded animals make constant tiny adjustments in arousal in response to external events, but humans, who have developed a much more complicated internal life as a result of language, respond emotionally not only to their surroundings but to their own thoughts. Whenever a sought-for answer snaps into place, there is a shudder of pleased recognition. Creative discovery being pleasurable, humans have learned to find ways of milking this natural response. The fact that jokes tap into our general evaluative machinery explains why the line between funny and disgusting, or funny and frightening, can be so fine. Whether a joke gives pleasure or pain depends on a person's outlook.

C. Humour may be a luxury, but the mechanism behind it is no evolutionary accident. As Peter Derks, a psychologist at William and Mary College in Virginia, says: 'I like to think of humour as the distorted mirror of the mind. It's creative, perceptual, analytical, and lingual. If we can figure out how the mind processes humour, then we'll have a pretty good handle on it works in general." 

Questions 24-27

Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-G below. Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 24-27 on your answer sheet.

A react to their own thoughts.

B helped create language in humans.

C respond instantly to whatever is happening.

D may provide valuable information about the operation of the brain.

E cope with difficult situations.

F relate to a person’s subjective views.

G led our ancestors to smile and then laugh.

24. One of the brain’s most difficult tasks is to

25. Because of the language they have developed, humans

26. Individual responses to humour

27. Peter Derks believes that humour