What Do Holiday Cracker Jokes Influence The Brain?

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

This one-liner is greeted with groans that echo through a warehouse in London.

This describes a joke-testing meeting with a firm that produces supplies for gatherings. Its repertoire includes Christmas crackers.

The firm's founder smiles, almost apologetically at the joke. But the pun has been selected and will appear in future crackers.

"The success is gauged by the gag by the number of moans and the loudness of the groans around the table," the founder says.

The secret to a good Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a good gag per se. It is all about the setting - in this case, the shared laughter of the Christmas meal with elders, children and possibly friends.

"You want the gag to be a thing that unites the child together with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Of Shared Amusement

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

"So when you are laughing with people around the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's very likely a truly primordial mammal play sound," explains a neuroscience expert.

Communal amusement, she says, aids in make and maintain social connections between individuals.

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

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced levels of 'happy chemical' uptake," she adds.

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in response to pleasurable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a truly terrible festive cracker joke.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly joke with a holiday cracker," she says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the really important work of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you love."

What Occurs Inside the Mind?

But what is actually taking place within the brain when we hear a joke?

A tremendous amount happens in response to comedy, it turns out.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of brain scanner which indicates which parts of the brain are working harder, researchers have been able to chart the regions that receive more blood.

The research involves scanning the minds of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a database of humorous words, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we observed a really fascinating activation pattern of activation," notes the professor.

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the mind in charge of auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also brain regions associated with both planning and starting motion and those involved in sight and memory.

Combine these elements as a whole, and people listening to a joke have a complex set of brain reactions that underpin the amusement we hear.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

Scientists found that when a funny word is combined with laughter there is a greater reaction in the brain than the same word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in parts of the brain that you would employ to move your expression into a grin or a laugh," the professor says.

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

Amusement, says the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles heard around a holiday gathering?

"People laugh more when you are familiar with people," she notes, "and you laugh further when you are fond of them or care for them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she explains, the feel-good factor is more probable to be caused not by the gag itself, but from the reaction to it.

"The laughter is key. The gag is the dreadful holiday cracker joke, and it's just a pretext to laugh as a group."

The Quest for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Is it possible to discover the perfect joke?

Likely not, but that has not prevented researchers from trying to.

In 2001, a professor established a scientific search for the planet's funniest gag.

More than tens of thousands of jokes later, with scores lodged by 350,000 participants around the world, he has a better idea than many as to what works and what fails.

The perfect Christmas cracker joke must be short, he says.

"But they also need to be bad jokes, jokes that make us groan," he continues.

The increasingly "awful" the joke, he states the more effective.

"The reason is that if no-one laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not your own.

"What's interesting about the Christmas cracker jokes is that not one person find them funny.

"That's a shared moment at the table and I think it's wonderful."