The Impact of Christmas Cracker Gags Do to The Brain?

"What was the price did Santa's sleigh cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

This joke is met by moans that echo through a storage facility in London.

This describes a humor-evaluation session with a firm that makes supplies for social events. Its repertoire features Christmas crackers.

The company's owner grins, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the joke has been selected and will appear in future crackers.

"The success is gauged by the gag by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans at the table," the founder explains.

The secret to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a stand-up gag per se. It is entirely about the context - in this case, the communal laughter of the Christmas meal with elders, children and possibly friends.

"You want the joke to be a thing that brings the child together with the grandparent," she states.

The Science Of Communal Amusement

Coming together to experience communal amusement is not only ancient, scientists say, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others at the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's very likely a really primordial mammalian social sound," explains a neuroscience expert.

Shared amusement, she explains, aids in make and maintain social bonds between people.

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

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it leads to increased amounts of 'happy chemical' uptake," she continues.

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable experiences, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly terrible Christmas cracker gag.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly pun with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are actually doing a lot of the really vital work of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you care about."

What Occurs In the Brain?

But what is truly happening inside the mind when we listen to a joke?

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

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scanner which indicates which parts of the mind are working harder, researchers have been able to map the areas that get more blood.

Testing involves scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we got a very interesting pattern of activation," says the neuroscientist.

A gag activates not just the areas of the brain responsible for auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also brain regions associated with both planning and initiating motion and those linked to vision and memory.

Combine all of this together, and people listening to a pun have a sophisticated set of neural responses that support the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

Scientists found that when a funny word is paired with chuckles there is a greater reaction in the brain than the same word when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the mind that you would employ to move your face into a grin or a laugh," she explains.

It means people are not just reacting to funny words, they are responding to the amusement that accompanies them.

Laughter, according to the professor, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the laughter found at a holiday gathering?

"You laugh harder when you are familiar with people," she notes, "and you laugh further when you like them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she says, the feel-good effect is more probable to be triggered 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 chuckle together."

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the perfect joke?

Probably not, but that has not stopped experts from attempting to.

Years ago, a psychologist established a research project for the world's funniest gag.

More than tens of thousands of jokes submitted, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a better understanding than many as to what works and what does not.

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

"They must also be poor jokes, jokes that cause us to groan," he adds.

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

"This is because if no-one laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not yours.

"What's interesting about the holiday cracker jokes is that none of us find them funny.

"It creates a shared experience around the gathering and I believe it's lovely."