Webster's Dictionary starts out with some odd facts about "humor." The word comes from OFr(Old French) from L (Latin) humor; and it means originally moisture, from humere, to be moist.
The definitions in order are: 1. originally - any fluid or juice of an animal or plant, especially any of the four fluids (cardinal humors) - there's that hinge word, cardinal - formerly considered responsible for one's health and disposition, blood, phlegm, choler (yellow bile), or melancholy (black bile). Yuk! (Yuk wasn't in the Dictionary) 2. a person's disposition or temperament, mood, state of mind. 3. whim, fancy, caprice. 4. quality that makes something seem funny, amusing or ludicrous; comicality.
How we got from moisture to a sense of humor, is one of those intricate progressions of language.
If you think about it for awhile, it sort of makes sense - I guess. Anyway, a couple of psychologists in Canada, several years ago, wanted to investigate how humor works. AHA! We now get scientific!
They pinpointed a part of our brain largely responsible for our ability to "get" a punch line and laugh at it.
They observed how 31 men and women, some with minor brain damage and some with healthy brains (do remember the brain damage part) reacted to jokes. People with damage to the right frontal lobe had trouble understanding jokes that required making verbal connections and did not smile or laugh even if they understood the jokes. They actually only appreciated slapstick humor.
Some earlier studies, with people wearing caps to measure their brain waves, pointed to the right side of the brain as the place where jokes are understood. Some bizarre medical cases showed patients who burst into spontaneous giggling with no apparent cause turned up tumors in the frontal lobe that hijacked the humor response. Some neurologists suggest patients with frontal lobe damage sometimes tell inappropriate, off-color and silly jokes. Does this sound like anyone you know? Hmmm!
So, the frontal lobes are pretty important in the humor department. The scientists dissected jokes and found many sophisticated components. Now pay attention, class. It involves taking in linguistic information, sifting through memories, making comparisons and solving problems. Then there is the connecting of intellectual knowledge with emotions so that mere words can set off a smile, a giggle or a belly buster. The frontal lobes integrate, it would seem, information from throughout the brain and emotional responses.
This may not be the whole center of joke genius. There may be other parts of the brain that work in the humor field as well. More study is needed, I suppose.
The simple, slapstick humor that patients with frontal lobe damage enjoyed is the kind of humor most young children understand. Children's frontal lobes are not fully developed. It's also more the type of humor enjoyed by men. I think I know where I'm going with this.
Studies of gender differences show women more likely to enjoy jokes that brain-damaged patients couldn't understand - longer narratives, personal information and memories. Men are more likely to enjoy slapstick humor like the Three Stooges, flatulence (you get the picture). Tsk! Men seem to enjoy humor that the impaired get a laugh from, or the infantile. Understand that this is from a scientific study, now.
So, question of the day: Are all men brain-damaged? We can use a syllogism in Logic and find that this is not so, ALL being the offending word. However, ladies, isn't it something you've secretly suspected all along?
Apologies to my sons. This IS just all in fun. Right? Where's yer sense o' humor?
9/28/11
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