CHECK OUT MY RECENTLY PUBLISHED PAPERS:
Exploring The Possibility Of An Elimination Algorithm as the Basis for Human Intuition: A Study of a Successful Expert System for Eye Disease Diagnosis
Unlocking The Science Of Emotions Through Pattern Recognition: Establishing Emotions As A Proper Field Of Study
Humor is an emotion, which identifies, records and sustains a tension releasing event. Whether it is slapstick, ironic, aggressive, or self effacing, humor highlights the demolition of a faulty nervous perception. Conflict, loss of territory, or unfamiliar events ceaselessly imply a potential for pain. Beginning with an acknowledged reason for tension, humor is triggered with the surprise discovery that the reason is false. One frontal lobe identifies a reason for tension, while the other lobe discovers the reasoning error. Intuition, a pattern recognition algorithm, triggers humor at this instant shift of system viewpoint from a tense state to a relaxed one. Both hemispheres confirm the reasons for the release of tension.
Humor triggers tension releasing responses including laughter. Laughter can occur in many emotional contexts. It can accompany joy, affection, amusement, cheerfulness, surprise, nervousness, sadness, fear, shame, aggression, triumph, taunt and in the pleasure from another's misfortune (schadenfreude). Humor refers to joyful laughter. Peek-a-boo can elicit a humorous response in four month old infants and involves a tense search ending with a pleasant surprise – a two stage process. This theory of humor presumes the ability of the prefrontal regions of the two hemispheres of the brain to independently make two distinct interpretations of the environment.
A Theory of Humor
Does The Brain Contain Separate Functional Regions?
Imagine the existence of such brain regions with the ability to learn,
remember, recognize, and transmit information about specific
functions. In 2004, a Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery that
the olfactory system recognizes smells by recognizing a combinatorial
code in the firing combinations of its smell receptors. Through its
combinatorial memories, this brain region remembers and recognizes
the subtle differences between millions of smells. It evaluates air
molecules and sends combinatorial signals, indicating recognition of,
say, the smell of an orange. Those symbols are recognized by other
networks in the nervous system.
The olfactory system is a functional
network, focused completely on the recognition of smells. Major
functional regions include those which make emotional interpretations
of events. At the highest level, the prefrontal regions make logical
interpretation of events based on an evaluation of the global
information available to the system. One of the two hemispheres
makes a broadly logical view of the environment and the other, a
negative emotional view.
A Theory of Humor
Do The Two Hemispheres Hold Different
Viewpoints?
The two cerebral hemispheres exhibit bilateral
symmetry in both structure and function. Both have the ability to
manage the system. If even an entire hemisphere, is either injured
or destroyed, its functions can be assumed by the other hemisphere.
But, at the highest levels of pattern recognition, each hemisphere is
functionally specialized in vertebrates including fish, frogs,
reptiles, birds and mammals. The left hemisphere is specialized to
logically categorize information, which is useful for routine
everyday behavior. The right hemisphere handles responses to novel
events and emotional behaviors in emergencies. This structural
distinction causes the brain to evaluate the environment
simultaneously from two radically different viewpoints.
A Theory of Humor -
Does The Brain Manage The Routine & The Unexpected?
There
were evolutionary benefits in the specialization of functions between
the two hemispheres. Such benefits were demonstrated in the
comparison studies of the survival behaviors of lateralized and
non-lateralized chicks. Those chicks, which were lateralized (through
early exposure to light) could pick seeds out of pebbles on the
ground with one eye and one half of the brain, while using the other
eye and other half of their brain to monitor the skies for predators.
The non-lateralized chicks could not complete the two tasks
simultaneously. The left hemisphere evaluates routine behaviors,
while the right hemisphere evaluates threats in the environment. The
two hemispheres of the brain operate in parallel, recognizing
patterns in the environment from two different viewpoints.
A
Theory of Humor
How Does Humor Trigger Laughter?
Humor
triggers laughter. Consciously willed laughter is triggered from the
premotor regions. Spontaneous humor is triggered by a single
instantaneous intuitive decision, following a global evaluation of an
event by the two frontal lobes. The resulting signals of a tension
releasing result of this evaluation are detected by the amygdala,
which initiates the neural signals, which lead to involuntary amused
laughter. It is the amygdala, which detects signals, which trigger
anger and fear as well as a range of social emotions, including guilt
and shame. The laughter signals from the amygdala are modulated by
several motor regions. The cerebellum finally manages the intensity
and duration of laughter in the social and emotional context.
A
Theory of Humor
How Does The Brain Trigger Emotions?
Humor is an
emotion. Nature utilizes emotions to precisely control animal
behavior to achieve specific survival objectives. When an emotion
takes control of the system, complex algorithms modify system
parameters and influence behaviors. Typically, the love emotion
makes an animal act to protect its loved one. In a typical behavior
response, love makes a person patient.
Prof. Schultz
discovered the algorithmic processes, which lead to patience. He
found that the nervous system accurately estimates the time it will
take for a task to be completed. For this precise period, it sends,
simultaneously, dopamine surges to the forebrain and inhibitive
messages to the amygdala. These neural responses gives a person
patience – the energy to complete a task, while suppressing the
emotions of anger, irritability, jealousy and rudeness. Evidently,
when love makes a person patient, this algorithm extends the
estimated time subconsciously allowed to a loved one to complete a
task.
Just as with love, complex algorithms decide the
triggering points for humor. Other algorithms manage the habitual
motor actions triggered by laughter. Humor is an emotion designed to
identify events, which release tension and to record such events into
memory. A variety of algorithms decide the trigger points for
humor.
A Theory of Humor
Is It Critical To Remember False Threats?
Humor
may have originated from an emotion, which enables a herd to evaluate
and remember false alarms. Even as young animals play with each
other in a herd, a single animal, which detects a predator, becomes
tense. The mirror neuron systems (MNS) in its neighbors detect and
spread this tension throughout the herd, without alerting the
predator. A removal of the threat releases the tension, which is
also sensed by the herd. The tension releasing mechanism prevents
panic and returns the herd with equal speed to relaxation and play.
Primates and humans evolved to be able to evaluate the more
subtle reasons for tension and to anticipate them better. Since many
threats were false, humor developed as a wise emotion, which
instantly released tension, on recognition of a false threat. The
emotion triggered the laughter mechanism and recorded the event into
herd memory, helping to avoid the repetition of false alarms.
Research has noted the similarity in forms of laughter among humans
and apes when tickled, suggesting that laughter derived from a common
origin among primate species, and has subsequently evolved prior to
the origin of humans. So although nonhuman primates laugh, human
humor seems also to involve more specialized cognitive networks that
are unshared by other species.
Humor brings instantaneous and
infectious responses to a faulty evaluation of threat. The left
hemisphere, which evaluates routine behaviors, is activated by
positive emotions, while the right hemisphere, which evaluates
threats in the environment, is activated by stressful situations.
Humor is triggered, when the more negative right lobes recognize the
situation to be free of stress and the left lobes uncover the faulty
logic, which initiated the stress. The left lobe takes over and the
right lobe becomes subdued. It is known that damage to the right
frontal lobe stops its inhibitive effect, causing patients to
demonstrate inappropriate euphoria and to see nonhumorous situations
as being funny. With myriad reasons for tension, the surprise
discovery of a false reason triggers the humor emotion. Both
hemispheres need to confirm the reasons for release of tension.
A
Theory of Humor
What Are The Causes For Tension?
Humor occurs with a
release of tension. Such tension exists at an existential level.
The territorial instinct developed to protect a territory as a safe
sanctuary for raising the young. With evolution, such territories
came to include ethnic boundaries, or political or religious beliefs.
Tensions exist with physical threats, competitive threats and
threats to social wellbeing, or pride. Events, which ridicule
such threats trigger laughter and release tension.
The
potential for pain causes tension in slapstick comedy. The actors are
punished painfully, but appear to be only mildly affected. It is not
funny if a person is knocked unconscious. It is funny, if he gets up
and walks away with an exaggerated limp. The tension of the blow is
relieved by the absurd response of the victim. In self deprecating
humor, a person indicates that he is not as aggressive, evil, or
powerful as is perceived. Racial humor suggests that certain races
pose no threat. A search for a solution to a puzzle generates
tension. “Why do cows wear bells? Their horns don’t work.” A
surprise answer releases it.
A Theory of Humor
How Does Absurdity Help Humor?
Absurd solutions begin with confusion and end with a release of
tension. Absurdity alone triggers humor. According to Chaplin, “
I wanted everything to be a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat
tight, the hat small and the shoes large ... I added a small
mustache...” Chaplin's success lay in his ability to convince
both hemispheres that his absurd misadventures were sincere, but
misguided. When he bumped into a tree and then lifted his hat to the
tree in apology, his innate courtesy added to his credibility and
absurdity completed the picture. Research has established that the
MNS enables a person to know he intentions of another. Lesser
actors, who imitated Chaplin's scenes, failed. The MNS of the
audience sensed the anxiety of such actors to please the audience,
discounting the sincerity of their absurd actions.
A
Theory of Humor
Are There Other Humor Triggers?
Just as it makes a yawn infectious, MNS causes people to share
laughter. When everyone is relaxed, it becomes easier to laugh at
false threats. A cheerful person, who “laughs at life,” opens
interactions with a tension free view of life. In such a context,
laughter is triggered for even trivial causes. People, who are open
and sharing create an empathic situation, where shared laughter may
help to release tension. A sarcastic remark can be painful to the
victim, but provides a relief of tension for his opponent. Self
deprecating humor suggests that the threat is not as fearsome as is
imagined. Dry deadpan humor presents surprise reasons, why the
threat is false. Highbrow humor suggests erudite reasons why a threat
is false. Bathroom humor suggests that social propriety is no
threat. Both music and works of art can present humor through such
tension releasing contexts.
A Theory of Humor
When Does Humor
Fall Flat?
Surprise is a triggering element for humor. The
MNS anticipates the behavior of others. It replicates the neural
activity within the brain, imitating the physical actions as well as
the feelings and emotions of the people they observe. MNS grants the
two hemispheres an accurate view of the anticipated behavior of
others. So the surprise has to be genuine.
The somatosensory
cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex respond with laughter to a
surprise receipt of pleasant information, such as a tickling
sensation. But, if you tickle yourself, there is no laughter
response, because there is no surprise. The cerebellum manages the
habitual motor actions involved in self-tickling. It informs the
system that the self-tickling sensation is to be expected, killing
the surprise. When someone else tickles you, those regions respond
with laughter, since the stimulus is unexpected. With their high
level pattern recognition of all such network activity by the
prefrontal hemispheres, even microscopically small discrepancies can
cause humor to fall flat.