feelings of mirth reduced levels of cor-
tisol, a stress hormone that has been
shown to hinder recall.
A good joke can function as a re-
lease valve for the whole body. “Hu-
mor can help reframe stressors,
challenges, or difficulties that seem in-
surmountable to a person,” says Tom
Ford, a social psychologist at Western
Carolina University and a coauthor
of The Psychology of Humor. “If one
is able to make light of a stressor or
challenge, then it doesn’t seem so big.
It seems more manageable.”
Researchers in Hong Kong, for in-
stance, demonstrated that when nurs-
ing home patients with chronic pain
enjoyed jokes, funny books and vid-
eos, and goofy singing and dancing
on a weekly basis, their perceptionThis Is Your Brain on Humor
These fMRI scans of the left and right halves of the brain show how it responds
to different types of information. The yellow and orange represent greater activation
than baseline brain function, while blue represents significantly lower activation than
baseline. Scan A is of the brain looking at a cartoon with a nonhumorous caption. In
scan B, the brain is looking at a cartoon with a humorous caption, which activates
more neurons.ANonhumorous Insight BHumorous Insight“get” a joke, the neurons are activated
in a quick burst. When we construct a
joke, activity in the same brain regions
increases slowly as we rack our brains
for dissimilar elements that we can
link. If appreciating humor is good
exercise for our brains, then writing a
joke is exercise on steroids.H
umor helps our cognition in
less obvious ways too. Laugh-
ter is a natural stress reliever,
and our brains work better when they
aren’t slowed down by a fog of worry.
In 2014, researchers in California
demonstrated that elderly subjects
who watched a funny video experi-
enced significant improvements in
their ability to learn and retain new
information, possibly because therd.com 61co
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