The Impact of Festive Cracker Jokes Affect Our Brains?

"What was the price did Santa's sleigh cost? Zero, it was on the house."

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

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a company that makes supplies for social events. Its catalogue includes festive crackers.

The firm's owner smiles, nearly sheepishly at the gag. But the joke has made the cut and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"You measure the joke by the number of moans and the loudness of the groans around the table," she explains.

The key to a good holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up joke in itself. It is all about the setting - in this case, the shared amusement of the Christmas dinner table with grandparents, kids and possibly friends.

"You want the joke to be a thing that unites the eight-year-old in harmony with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Science Behind Communal Amusement

Coming together to enjoy communal amusement is not only nothing new, scientists argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"So when you are chuckling with others around the holiday table you are dropping into what's very likely a really ancient mammal social vocalisation," says a neuroscience expert.

Communal laughter, she explains, aids in make and maintain social connections between people.

Researchers have discovered that a absence of these interactions can significantly damage mental and physical health.

"The people you talk to, and laugh with, it leads to increased amounts of 'happy chemical' release," she continues.

Endorphins are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to reduce tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly vital work of making, maintaining the connections you have with those you care about."

Which Occurs Inside the Brain?

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

An awful lot happens in response to humour, it turns out.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of neural imager which indicates which parts of the brain are working harder, scientists have been able to map the areas that get more blood.

Testing entails scanning the minds of healthy participants and then exposing them to a collection of funny phrases, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"During the study we got a very interesting pattern of neural activity," notes the professor.

A gag activates not just the parts of the mind responsible for hearing and understanding language, but also neural regions involved in both preparation and starting motion and those involved in vision and recall.

Put these elements together, and people listening to a pun have a sophisticated set of neural reactions that support the amusement we experience.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a funny phrase is paired with chuckles there is a stronger reaction in the brain than the same word when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in areas of the brain that you would employ to contort your expression into a grin or a chuckle," she explains.

It means we are not just reacting to humorous words, they are reacting to the laughter that accompanies them.

Laughter, according to the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the laughter found around a holiday table?

"You laugh more when you know people," she says, "and you laugh further when you are fond of them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she explains, the positive effect is more probable to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the reaction to it.

"It's the laughter. The gag is the terrible Christmas cracker joke, and it's just a pretext to laugh together."

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the ultimate gag?

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

In 2001, a professor set up a research search for the planet's most humorous gag.

More than 40,000 gags later, with scores provided by hundreds of thousands of participants around the world, he has a better idea than many as to what works and what does not.

The ideal Christmas cracker joke must be brief, he says.

"But they also need to be poor jokes, jokes that cause us to moan," he adds.

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

"The reason is that if nobody finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.

"The fascinating part about the Christmas cracker puns is that not one person considers them humorous.

"That's a shared moment around the table and I think it's lovely."