The Impact of Holiday Cracker Puns Influence The Brain?

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

This joke is met by groans that resonate through a warehouse in London.

This describes a humor-evaluation session with a firm that makes products for gatherings. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

The firm's owner smiles, almost apologetically at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will feature in future crackers.

"You measure the gag by the number of groans and the loudness of the groans at the table," the founder says.

The secret to a great holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up gag in itself. It is all about the context - in this case, the shared amusement of the holiday dinner table with grandparents, children and potentially neighbours.

"You want the joke to be something that brings the child in harmony with the grandparent," she states.

The Science Behind Shared Laughter

Coming together to enjoy shared amusement is not only nothing new, scientists argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"So when you are laughing with others around the holiday table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a really ancient mammal play sound," explains a neuroscience expert.

Communal amusement, she explains, helps make and maintain social bonds between people.

Researchers have found that a lack of such social exchanges can significantly damage both psychological and bodily well-being.

"The people you talk to, and share laughter with, it results in enhanced levels of endorphin uptake," she continues.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to pleasurable experiences, such as chuckling with friends over a particularly terrible festive cracker gag.

"You're not just laughing at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly vital task of building, preserving the social bonds you have with the people you care about."

Which Occurs In the Brain?

But what is actually taking place inside the mind when we listen to a joke?

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

Employing brain scanning technology, a kind of neural imager which shows which areas of the brain are more active, researchers have been able to map the regions that get more blood flow.

Testing entails scanning the brains of volunteer participants and then exposing them to a database of funny phrases, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we got a really interesting activation pattern of neural activity," says the neuroscientist.

A joke stimulates not just the areas of the mind responsible for auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also brain areas involved in both preparation and initiating movement and those linked to vision and recall.

Put all of this as a whole, and individuals hearing a pun have a sophisticated set of brain responses that underpin the laughter we hear.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a funny phrase is combined with laughter there is a greater reaction in the mind than the identical word when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

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

It indicates people are not just reacting to humorous jokes, they are responding to the laughter that accompanies them.

Laughter, says the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this imply for the laughter heard around a Christmas table?

"You laugh more when you are familiar with people," she says, "and laughter increases more when you are fond of them or care for them."

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

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

The Search for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Will we ever find the perfect joke?

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

Years ago, a professor established a scientific search for the planet's funniest joke.

Over tens of thousands of gags later, with ratings provided by 350,000 participants around the world, he has a clearer idea than many as to what works and what does not.

The ideal festive cracker joke needs to be short, he explains.

"But they also need to be poor gags, jokes that make us groan," he adds.

The increasingly "awful" the joke, he states the better.

"This is because if no-one finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.

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

"That's a common experience around the gathering and I think it's wonderful."