Science tells us that laughter is a trait that Homo sapiens shares with primates
Although we now know how the brain reacts once a joke is decoded, the joke procedure itself requires some mental theorization.
Did you find the sms you just won on your cell phone funny? And you’re making fun of this political meme you bumped into on social media?
What made them so funny? He doesn’t know, but don’t worry, nobody knows. Even scientists, psychologists and neuroscientists have difficulty unraveling what makes a joke or scenario fun.
Robert Provine, a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland in the United States, who spent his entire life looking to find out what caused laughter and laughter until his death in October last year, once said, “The most productive laughs have nothing. to do with smart jokes.”
Provine, who wandered the streets of American cities listening to the comments, hoping to hear anything that made him laugh, called his studies “pavement neuroscience.” Interestingly, Provine, who got about 1,200 such comments before laughing foolishly in college cafes, buying groceries in malls and sidewalks, discovered that laughter rarely follows a joke. He said other people laughed even when humor wasn’t worried and humans could laugh 30 times more when the joke was about others than about themselves.
Science tells us that laughter is a trait that Homo sapiens shares with other primates. It is known that most primate species use laughter as a means of communication. In a 2009 study, Marina Davila Ross, primatologist at the University of Portsmouth in the UK, and others, the sounds of laughter induced through the ticklings of young orangutans, chimpanzees, gorillas and bonobos with those of human babies and discovered an unforeseen resemblance.
An April article last year in the public awareness segment of the Society for Neuroscience, the world’s most reputable neuroscience framework, states that it’s not just humans and monkeys, even rats laugh. Humans, he says, laugh at a series of short notes of 75 milliseconds when they expire. Whatever its shape, laughter is an effective and expansive way to expand ties and accept as true with the interior of species.
Laughter does more than that: it makes you feel better. Scientists examining laughter have sought to know what’s going on in the brain when a user laughs. The reaction, they say, is similar to when you’re rewarded.
“Whether tickle or humor, some spaces of the brain would witness the superior activity. It is the regions of the brain (the ventromial prefrontal cortex and ventral striated cortex) that are components of the praise system. These are the same regions that are activated when you make cash or win a game,” says researcher Prateekshit Pandey, who studies neuroscience in political humor at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States.
Pandey, who is from Delhi and completed his undergraduate studies in computer science at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology in New Delhi before moving to the United States for doctoral studies in 2016, says some studies show how the brain reacts to individual humor modalities. text, audio, visual or audiovisual; However, very little is known about a non-unusual brain formula that works in all modalities.
“When you laugh at something audiovisual, which is more complex than laughing at anything that comes in text form, there would be more regions of the brain concerned with interpreting – or – humor. But I haven’t come across a neural mechanism that’s not unusual to all modalities,” Pandey says.
While we now know how the brain reacts once a joke is decoded, the procedure of understanding the joke itself requires a mental theory. There are necessarily 3 kinds of theories as to why something is funny. The theory of genius states that a user feels amazing to another person and therefore laughs at the expense of the latter. Joking about anything that is stressful, tense or taboo relieves tension and is called the theory of relief.
The third is the theory of the solution of inconsistencies. In this, the joke artificially creates an incongruity; the brain decodes it and the user feels rewarded. Researchers say more burlesque comedies or puns fall into this category. Pandey cites an example: what is the difference between a guitar and a fish? You can’t catch tuna.
People would rarely describe a joke as competitive, but Pandey argues that humor has its roots in aggression. “Every joke is competitive in some way; some may be more so, others less so. This attack is aimed at someone or something. If you are able to make a joke about someone very effectively, then that user is related to “being a joke” and the severity (of the disorders caused by that user) decreases,” he says.
A clever example of this, he says, is the humor that came up around Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. “One of the reasons Congress was so affected in the 2014 election is that Rahul Gandhi has become a joke. It’s a meme. This has been addressed very well through the existing exemption. I don’t know if any plans had been made. to make those jokes, ” he says.
Research on the afterlife has shown that those who can make jokes are perceived as wise through other people and, more importantly, politicians who can take the joke off themselves are perceived as more understanding, Pandey says.
Science has done its part, but it’s time for politicians to worry with humor. After all, the one who laughs last laughs more.
Jayan Television
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