The Impact of Holiday Cracker Jokes Affect Our Brains?

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

This quip is met by groans that resonate through a storage facility in London.

This describes a joke-testing meeting with a company that makes products for social events. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

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

"The success is gauged by the joke by the volume of moans and the intensity of the groans at the table," she explains.

The key to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a stand-up joke per se. It is all about the setting - in this case, the communal amusement of the holiday dinner table with grandparents, children and potentially friends.

"The goal is for the gag to be something that brings the child together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Science Of Shared Amusement

Coming together to experience communal laughter is not only ancient, scientists argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others around the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammal social sound," explains a professor.

Shared laughter, she says, helps forge and strengthen social connections between people.

Researchers have discovered that a absence of these social exchanges can significantly harm mental and physical well-being.

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' release," the professor continues.

Endorphins are the body's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to reduce tension and discomfort and in response to pleasurable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a particularly terrible Christmas cracker joke.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the really important task of making, maintaining the connections you have with those you care about."

What Occurs Inside the Mind?

But what is actually taking place inside the mind when we listen to a gag?

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

Employing brain scanning technology, a kind of brain scanner which shows which parts of the mind are working harder, researchers have been able to map the areas that get more blood.

The research involves scanning the brains of healthy participants and then exposing them to a collection of funny words, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we observed a very interesting pattern of neural activity," says the neuroscientist.

A gag activates not just the areas of the mind in charge of hearing and understanding language, but also brain areas associated with both preparation and initiating motion and those linked to vision and memory.

Put all of this as a whole, and individuals hearing a joke have a complex series of brain responses that support the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a funny phrase is paired with laughter there is a greater response in the brain than the identical word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the mind that you would employ to move your expression into a smile or a chuckle," she explains.

It means we are not just reacting to humorous jokes, they are responding to the amusement that accompanies them.

Laughter, according to the expert, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the laughter heard at a holiday table?

"People 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 positive effect is more likely to be caused not by the gag in itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the perfect joke?

Likely not, but that has not stopped researchers from attempting to.

Years ago, a professor established a scientific search for the world's most humorous gag.

More than 40,000 gags submitted, with scores provided by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a better idea than many as to what succeeds and what does not.

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

"They must also be poor gags, puns that cause us to moan," he adds.

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

"The reason is that if nobody finds it funny – it's the gag's fault, not your own.

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

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