What Do Festive Cracker Puns Influence Our Brains?

"How much did Father Christmas's sled cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

This one-liner is greeted with moans that resonate through a storage facility in London.

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a company that makes supplies for gatherings. Its repertoire features festive crackers.

The company's founder grins, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will feature in future crackers.

"The success is gauged by the joke by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans at the table," she says.

The secret to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a good joke in itself. It is all about the setting - in this case, the communal amusement of the Christmas dinner table with grandparents, kids and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the gag to be a thing that brings the child in harmony with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Of Shared Laughter

Gathering to experience shared laughter is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others around the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's very likely a really ancient mammal play sound," says a professor.

Communal amusement, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social bonds between people.

Researchers have found that a absence of these social exchanges can seriously harm both psychological and bodily health.

"Those you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in increased amounts of 'happy chemical' uptake," she adds.

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to alleviate stress and pain and in response to pleasurable experiences, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly awful Christmas cracker gag.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly joke with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly important task of building, preserving the connections you have with those you care about."

What Occurs Inside the Brain?

But what is truly happening inside the mind when we hear a joke?

A tremendous amount occurs in reaction to comedy, it turns out.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of neural imager which shows which parts of the brain are more active, researchers have been able to chart the areas that get more blood.

Testing entails scanning the minds of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous words, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we got a really interesting activation pattern of activation," notes the neuroscientist.

A gag activates not just the areas of the mind responsible for hearing and understanding speech, but also neural areas associated with both planning and initiating movement and those linked to vision and recall.

Put these elements together, and individuals listening to a joke have a sophisticated series of neural responses that underpin the amusement we hear.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

Scientists found that when a humorous phrase is combined with laughter there is a greater reaction in the brain than the same phrase when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the mind that you would use to move your face into a smile or a laugh," the professor says.

It indicates people are not just responding to funny words, they are responding to the amusement that accompanies them.

Laughter, according to the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the laughter found around a holiday gathering?

"You laugh harder when you are familiar with others," she notes, "and laughter increases further when you like them or care for them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she explains, the positive effect is more probable to be caused not by the gag itself, but from the response to it.

"It's the laughter. The joke is the dreadful holiday cracker joke, and it's just a pretext to chuckle together."

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the perfect gag?

Probably not, but that has not stopped researchers from attempting to.

Years ago, a psychologist established a research search for the planet's funniest joke.

More than tens of thousands of jokes later, with ratings lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants around the world, he has a clearer understanding than many as to what works and what does not.

The perfect Christmas cracker pun must be short, he explains.

"They must also be poor gags, jokes that cause us to groan," he adds.

The more "awful" the gag, he says the more effective.

"This is because if no-one laughs – it's the joke's shortcoming, not your own.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker jokes is that not one person find them humorous.

"That's a common experience at the table and I think it's wonderful."