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LAUGH FACTOR
Why do you find some jokes funny and others groaners? Psychologists are looking into the brain and they think they've found the answer. And that's no laughing matter.

Text: ANDREW PYPER

TWO PSYCHOLOGISTS GET TOGETHER AND HAVE SEX. Afterward, one says to the other: "It was good for you. How was it for me?" Whether or not you found this joke funny depends upon the degree to which it aroused your medial ventral prefrontal cortex. How do I know this? A psychologist told me. I've brought Vinod Goel, a professor in the Department of Psychology at York University, to a comedy club in Toronto to help me understand what happens in our brains when we laugh. He is among a handful of Canada-based scientists who are exploring the science of humour.

Unfortunately, there is precious little humour in the room so far this evening. The stand-up pacing the stage at the moment is dying a slow comedic death. One after the other, he delivers tired jokes about bad airline food and romantic advice for guys ("If you have a wife, you definitely need a girlfriend. You don't drive a car without a spare, do you?"). It's the sort of unfunny material we've heard a million times before.

Scientists working at Canadian universities and research institutions are at the vanguard of research into how humour is processed by the human brain. (Why Canada? That's probably the subject of another batch of research.) Among them, Herbert Lefcourt of the University of Waterloo has shown how humour can make us healthier and more resistant to disease. There is also evidence that hostile humour that denigrates others (usually favoured by men over women) may have fewer positive effects than humour that encourages others to laugh at the teller of the story.

"No surprises," Goel whispers. He's right, of course. But my cherubic, nacho-chomping companion isn't referring to his low expectations of the evening, but to the neurological processes he studies. What he's looking for is the surprise that happens between the cognitive ("I get it") and the emotion-generating ("That's hilarious!") parts of our brain. If a punchline lacks an "unexpected angle," you'll be left understanding the joke without finding it funny. Or more precisely, your medial ventral prefrontal cortex won't be tickled.

"That's the part that allows you to think outside the box," says the professor.

"Like a real funny bone," I suggest.

"You could put it that way," he sighs, as though he's heard that one a million times, too. Professor Goel's breakthrough discovery is this: our "sense of humour" is not located in any one part of the brain, but is instead a kind of dialogue between many different sectors. This insight bears significantly on future brain research, revising the model of our grey matter from a collection of stand-offish "departments" to a single chattering team working together to perform sophisticated tasks.

"Humour works as the perfect bridge between the rational and emotional mind," Goel tells me. In other words, his discovery not only shows that humour is one of the most sophisticated activities of the human mind, but that how we "make fun" may well lead us to achieve a higher potential as creative problem solvers. THE SIMPLE ACT OF LAUGHING MIGHT BE THE KEY TO DISCOVERING HOW WE EVOLVE. NO JOKE.

The next comic leaps to the stage and, for the next 15 minutes, he labours through a toxic routine riddled with obscenities and remarks about the size of his sexual hardware. It doesn't go over well with the crowd. "With off-colour humour," the straight-faced Goel points out after a round of beer, "the inhibition issue is very important. For this kind of humour to be funny, overlearned knowledge - such as what we agree to be offensive - would have to be blocked out. Creativity is in large measure the checking of these kinds of 'normal' thoughts."

CREATIVITY, HUMOUR, IRONY AND UNCONVENTIONAL THINKING ARE THE MENTAL ATTRIBUTES THAT GOEL'S RESEARCH AIMS TO UNDERSTAND. He describes his project as finding out "why we are sometimes able to solve the most complex problems while we're shaving," or how we can often be our smartest when we don't think we're thinking at all. In his most recent study, 14 people were given functional MRI scans while listening to jokes. The part of the brain that processed them ended up being different, depending on the type of joke. But when one was genuinely funny, it was the same spot - the medial ventral prefrontal cortex - that was stimulated.

Aside from the pure scientific benefits of understanding the architecture of the human brain better, Goel hopes that his funny findings will have serious implications for medical therapies in neurologically troubled patients. For now, though, he says, "We're still just guessing. Humour is a unique paradigm in brain studies. But we still don't fully know what its underlying mechanisms are."

One premise of Goel's work is that among people who seem to have a very poor sense of humour (or in the case of my aunt in Bournemouth, perhaps none at all), it may not be a matter of simply having differing tastes from the norm. They may have had a knock on the head or a lesion on their cranial funny bone. Or they may be psychopaths. AMONG THEIR MANY OTHER FAILINGS, SERIAL KILLERS HAVE DIFFICULTY MANAGING THE YUKS.

"They have much less activity in the funny bone, as you call it," Professor Goel tells me, allowing a microscopic twinge of a smile. "If Ted Bundy were sitting in here right now, we would probably find his reactions to be quite flat." Actually, if Ted Bundy were sitting here, I would be at home locking the doors.

Given the talent on offer so far, you don't have to be a psychopath to not be overcome by mirth. Three comics have been on stage and all have gone down in flames. Then Nikki Payne, a diminutive, twitchy woman from Nova Scotia, with a troll's hair and hillbilly gaps between her teeth, lurches to the microphone. Snorts. Wipes her nose with the back of her hand. Casts bulging eyes out over the audience. The whole room is in hysterics and she hasn't even said a word.

"I would like to study that next," Professor Goel says excitedly after the show, still laughing. "Like cartoons, but without the dialogue or captions. It's a form of humour that even three-month-olds understand."

I ask Professor Goel if he's heard any good jokes himself lately, but he cocks his head quizzically as though I've asked him to drop his pants and dance across Yonge Street. For a guy who studies jokes, Goel doesn't seem to know any. Then he recalls a zinger from his daughter's repertoire.

"What does a frog say when she lays an egg?" he grins at me.

"Ouch!"

Funny bunch, those neuroscientists. They may know everything about how we laugh, but it still wouldn't stop them from getting booed off the stage on Amateur Night.