A power of the brain not fully understood

Rahman Mohamed

For over 365 days, almost three years ago, humans were told to stay away from each other and cover their face if they were near another, to distance.  Anyone who was there then will know and not forget.  Today some people are being told to role up their sleeves again for “Booster”.  Many have seen mental health problems; for some it was being apart from others while for others it was being forced to accept a new normal, a quick change in routine that may not change.  Turns out there’s a connection to this and what we sometimes don’t think about: the laugh.

The laugh, humour, may not be the same for all, including siblings and parents.  The laughs might sound different and different things might make you laugh.  At the same time humor plays an intricate role in society; just from the American President George W. Bush’s “misunderestimate”, society might have divided but at the same time brought together.  Some may remember the date, time, and speech – a patriotical American or someone that squirted milk out of his nose when he heard it (a Canadian who laughed); some might just remember the word and speaker, just the speaker, just the word or something somehow related but may not seem related (using “misunderestimate” in Scrabble before proposing and never using the word again; just saving it when explanation of a divorce is asked).  Humour itself is so popular research has been done on it.

Before Y2K (1999) some researchers at University of Toronto tested how humour would be appreciated by those with a brain injury (left vs. right); others without an injury, the ‘normal’, were included in “Humour appreciation: a role of the right frontal lobe“.  P. Shammi and D. T. Stuss analysed the brain using funny cartoons and finishing jokes.  They found that patients with left hemisphere damage were like the ‘normal’ group while those with right hemisphere damage “recognize the importance of the form of a joke but they have difficulty fully interpreting the joke’s content”. Results from some ancient studies (1983 and 1986) suggest that “patients with right hemisphere damage showed a preserved sensitivity to the surprise element of humour and a diminished ability to establish coherence. They seemed to retain an appreciation for simpler, slapstick humour that does not require integration of content across sentences.”

In this study they were exploring the frontal lobes. The frontal lobe was explored because past research suggests that damage here results in personality change and can also be related to someone becoming addicted to telling jokes that may be inappropriate, silly behaviour, and inappropriate laughter. The frontal lobes have been found crucial to personality and a sense of self. These lobes play a role in understanding abstract/non-literal communication such as sarcasm. In the study the right frontal lobe was chosen as the region of study because it is “considered as the most silent of brain areas.” (The researchers were probably bored)

In 1972 it was theorised that humour is a “problem-solving task in which the punch-line … must be detected and then reconciled with the lead”. Satire can involve problem solving for the laugh

Earlier, 1993 (3 decades ago), in a journal article published in the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science (volume 25, issue 1) Nicolas A. Kuiper and Rod A. Martin of University of Western Ontario with L. Joan Olinger of University Hospital researched a different side of humour, “Coping Humour, Stress, and Cognitive Appraisals“.  They looked at the relationship between a sense of humour and cognitive appraisals (things your mind does) in stressful events.

They were actually right about their predictions!  People with sense of humour looked at the stress as a challenge.  Not only that, people with a sense of humour changed how they looked at the test but the humourless didn’t.  According to the scientists the study shows that humour can help coping and adjustment (aka laugh at Timbit if you move to Canada from USA; it might help you figure out how to fit in while snow is falling 24/7).

Different theorists have given different reasons for humour.  Sigmund Freud argued that humour lets the ego overcome adversity.  Rollo May (1953) suggested humour’s role is “preserving the sense of self… It is the healthy way of feeling a ‘distance’ between one’s self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one’s problem with perspective” in Man’s Search for Himself, page 61.

Some have theorised that humans developed a sense of humour through evolution, a way to help humans deal with problems of the mind and social difficulty.  Humour could be an aspect of fight, laughing in the face of someone who wants to overpower you and control the tribe.

In the study of humour and stress they looked at secretory immunoglobulin A (S-IgA), a sign of how well the immune system is doing, one that has been looked at before.  The high humour subjects showed little or no change in S-IgA after the stress while the low humour subjects’ S-IgA went down.  But they said they don’t know “why” humour helps you deal with stress.

The subjects in this study were university students.  One result showed the high humour subjects did a better job in predicting their own results of an upcoming exam than the low humour subjects.

Seems you have to be smart or just have a working brain to appreciate humour and laugh.