Being Funny (or trying to)
A spotlight turns on and shines in my face. I slightly recoil, then look down at the audience. I look to my right and see a sign that reads “open-mic comedy night!” in neon colors. I tap the mic a few times, and the vibrations glide through the wires and the frequency is shot out through the shambly speakers on the wall at a much higher amplitude. I introduce myself, and say my opening joke. Once the sounds hit the ears of the audience, the stimuli travel to the audience’s Wernicke’s areas located in the left temporoparietal junction of the brain. Here, they take in the words I said and recognize them as a complete string of thought. A joke, like any other sentence, only makes sense when the words are not only recognized in and of themselves, but can also be interpreted in large groups. Alas, few thought this complete string was funny. Probably shouldn’t have started with a poop joke.
Moving on, I pace back and forth as I try to think of a joke that will work. Coming up with my material wasn’t easy. Unlike other creative activities, my comedy did not rely on increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex. Instead, my temporal lobe, responsible for abstract thoughts, linguistic analysis, and remote associations, is the driving force behind creating a great joke. The abstract thoughts help with the absurd aspects of a lot of my stories. The linguistic and semantic analysis allows me to humorously bend language (e.g. a pun) and point out the silliness of language in and of itself. The remote associations allow me to tie together things that, in a vacuum, couldn’t fit together yet, in my joke, act as two peas in a pod (e.g. creamed corn and an anti-terrorism task force).
Back on stage, I sift through my hippocampus to remember all of my material. Should I go with the one about space camp? Nah, too niche. Friend’s dad who’s a pirate? Too predictable. Ooo! How about the one about the fireman on the bidet? Let’s go for it!
Finally! A joke that stimulates the entire audience. The laughter is blaring! My auditory cortex is trying to pick it all up but fails to do so. Instead it all blends together into a cacophonous hum that takes me aback. The reward centers of the audience members (the ventral prefrontal, anterior cingulate, superior, and mid temporal cortices) fire away, and the euphoria kicks in! They were able to reconcile the punchline with the setup! This understanding occured in their temporo-parietal junction, right where the temporal and parietal lobes meet. This shouldn’t be surprising, as this junction deals with expectations and the meeting (or lack) thereof. The best kinds of jokes break expectations while still having the punchline agreeable with the premises.
While I only see the audience bouncing up and down, flashing their white teeth at me, bowing over in what seems like pain, under their skin is something else entirely. The audience’s intercostal muscles–the muscles within the ribcage–are working full-stop. The sinusoidal expansion and depression during normal breathing has been replaced with rapid, jittery, and erratic movement. With every “ha” comes a sharp exhalation, with every wheeze comes a powerful inhalation. These weren’t the controlled, low-pressure contractions of a socially polite laugh either; the air was being squeezed out of their lungs at a higher pressure, the frequencies of the noises are higher, and the wavelengths of each peak are longer than in any other process.
As they laugh on, their parasympathetic nervous system kicks in, calming them down. Due to the laugher, the body assumes they are safe and aren’t in need of their bodily defensive systems. Endorphins course through their veins as they feel more and more euphoria. The contagiousness of the laughter proliferates the chaos. The amygdala recognizes the social and behavioral patterns and tells the body to keep laughing so long as everyone else is!
The contagiousness is certainly beneficial on my end. A person is 30x more likely to audibly laugh if they are with company than if they are alone. No wonder no one laughs when I show them my comedy by myself.
Finally, the laughter dies down, and I deliver my final punchline. It completely bombs, as if the audience had no brain activity whatsoever.
Works Cited
Morris, Andréa. “The Neuroscience Of Being Funny: Meet The Neuroscientist Studying Brains Of Professional Comedians.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 9 Mar. 2018.
Neergaard, Camilla, and Jason Donald Warren. “The Neurology of Humour .” ACNR Online Neurology Journal , 4 Feb. 2014.
Popova, Maria. “This Is Your Brain on Comedy.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 3 Feb. 2012.
Scott, Sophie. “Why We Laugh.” TED. TED 2015, Mar. 2015, Vancouver.
Newman, Tim. “The Neuroscience of Humor Investigated.” Medical News Today, MediLexicon International, 1 Mar. 2017.