Neurosciences of humor Is gambling the same for the brain as clever words?

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Jonah Lester
Neurosciences of humor Is gambling the same for the brain as clever words?

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. George Orwell (1903-1950) British writer.

The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) British philosopher, of Austrian origin.

In the waiting room of an airline they prevent theft of passengers: We ask you to take care of your belongings, before they fly before you!!.

  • You cry when I leave, but you are happy when I expand (Jiménez, 1991).
  • If studying gives fruit, let trees study.
  • Life is a sweet potato, grab your right (Jiménez, 1991).
  • As the gardener says, let's be happy while we can.
  • Grandpa I'll give you your milk, no little daughter, better take me out in the sun for a while (Ruiz, 2014).
  • The confusion is very clear!.
  • What do you feel when I go? (Jiménez, 1991).
  • Blessed Adam who had no mother-in-law.
  • Beware of the albureros, because without you noticing, they are talking about holes!.

Conceptually witty words and gambling, as you can read in these examples, are different things, but for the brain it is the same, because they need to travel the same neural routes to make sense of it and provoke laughter as we will see later.

The Mexican writer Carlos Monsiváis used to say that “to get to know Mexican culture you have to start getting to know the albures, which are part of it. We all speak in a double sense ”(Escobedo, 2016).

Language becomes a symbolic game that allows us to be inside or outside of reality in a social group or even when we have an internal dialogue. When we talk to someone we not only communicate our needs, it is a “mental chess” as described by Lourdes Ruiz, the masked purslane champion of the albur in Tepito (Ruiz, 2014), it is to connect with culture, ideology, memory (individual and social), personal experiences, codes of belonging to a nation, politics, social life, pleasure, learning, sex, intelligence, flexibility, mental agility, and much more.

However, on the other side of the coin, language is confusion, it is deception, it is taking advantage of others, it is distorting reality, it is mistrust and even encrypting or covering up a message when in reality another is meant: I say it to Juan, so that Pedro understands it ”, or we say“ between joke and joke, the truth appears ”. The pun is very different from being offensive, rude and disrespectful.

Contents

  • How did the language?
  • Language is designed to confuse us
    • Some linguistic concepts related to humor and witty words
  • The nature of the game is maintained in adults
  • Neuroscience and humor
  • What happens in our brain from when we are told the joke until we laugh?
  • At the pun, men and women laugh alike?
  • Why don't all brains laugh at puns?
  • As a final reflection
    • References

How did the language?

On the origin of language, the scientific popularizer, Eduardo Punset points out: First, sounds appeared, then it seems that music arose, later language and much later writing. Understanding the origin of language within this sequence is somewhat complex and brings together numerous hypotheses and speculations, but let me focus on a fascinating finding on this question, it is the FOXP2 gene (For professional alburers, the name of this gene would also sound like like albur, the italics are mine). Mice communicate through ultrasounds that are imperceptible by our ears and it has been seen that the FOXP2 gene is crucial for this type of communication, if a mouse is born without this gene, it does not work properly, it will not be able to communicate with its mother. It turns out that this gene is also found in other mammals including humans, in fact, it has been seen that people born with a defective version of this gene cannot speak, it is difficult to control the movements of their mouths and understand the structures. The good thing about having identified a gene that is related to language, now opens doors for scientists to study its evolution and in part that of language itself. And, they have seen that FOXP2 has changed a lot throughout human evolution since about two hundred thousand years ago, more or less, when our species began to differentiate itself from other hominids (Punset, 2013).

We find different types of language around us: hieroglyphs, advertisements on the radio or television, when we read a book or when we listen carefully to our loved ones, but also when offending someone or if someone offends us. Language allows us to have an advantage in life over other species, it also allows us to have fun and create various linguistic structures.

Language is designed to confuse us

If we cannot understand a language, we are isolated from the world or it makes us live alone in our own world, but it can also be a paradox, a metaphor for reality or many more intricate linguistic mechanisms that make it difficult to understand even apparently speaking the language. same language.

According to evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban of the University of Pennsylvania, language is designed to confuse us. The brain has specific functions, but it also works by modules and these can operate in a contradictory way. The same brain can harbor two contradictory beliefs on the same issue. This can be verified in visual perception and also in language, he calls it: brain modularity. What you see is the result of the context. Thus, the human brain can host two mutually incompatible beliefs at the same time, from perception to morality (Punset, 2012).

Some linguistic concepts related to humor and witty words

  • Metonymy: it is a phenomenon of linguistics with which we can come across when we refer to a metaphor, since it is about the change of name of a circumstance or object product of time, the way or the reason for which it is used. A metonymy in a truly crude matter and with no intention of being more than a nickname (Venemedia, 2014). Example: Would you grant me this piece? (is to invite a person to dance at a party). Again for the experts in the bor the very name of this concept would again be a gamble, "I am such an expert in linguistics that you get metonymy without you realizing it".
  • Homonymy: two or more words are homonyms if they coincide in their written or oral form but they have different origins. It is a relationship between words. It also has two modes: homographs are those that are written the same and homophones are those that are pronounced the same. In Spanish, homographs are homophones (but not vice versa, since vaca and baca are homophones but not homographs) (Wikilengua, 2017). Homographic homonymy examples: bank (small furniture to sit on) and bank (Banking institution). Homophone homonymy: Johny Lotengo (name of a person); I don't even have it (I don't own something).
  • Paronymy is a semantic relationship that consists of two (or more) words that are similar in sound, but which are written differently and have different meanings. Example: unzip (release the straps) and deflate (deflate). Hunt (capture an animal) and marry (join a couple) (Gramáticas, 2013).
  • Polysemy: Polysemy (from "poly", many, and the Greek "semia", meaning), in linguistics occurs when the same word or linguistic sign has several meanings or meanings. A polysemic word is one that has two or more meanings that are related to each other. Example: Cat: Animal of the feline family. Tool for lifting heavy objects. Native dance from Uruguay and Argentina. Game type. Raised (Wikipedia, 2017).
  • Albur (Mexico): In Mexico, albur is a word game where participants (previously only between men, later women also began to participate) exchange phrases with a more or less hidden sexual meaning. It is considered that someone "wins" the exchange when the interlocutor remains silent or his response is not so ingenious (generally, it is interpreted, especially in the time when the participants were only men, that whoever "wins" ends up "proving" who plays the role of the active homosexual, while the one who "loses" ends up being the passive homosexual). The book Picardia mexicana, by the Mexican Armando Jiménez, made from its first edition (1958) one of the best compilations of albur, in particular, and of popular speech, in general, in the streets of the Historic Center of Mexico City (Wikipedia , 2017). If someone is very nervous, the first thing you invite them is a “White bouquet tea so they can relax” in the words of Lourdes Ruíz, not everyone understands it (Escobedo, 2016). In this albur allusion is made to a male ejaculation with relaxation included. At the top of that hill there is a dwarf elephant; you, who know how to sign, make me one with your hand. " Do you want beans in a sack? Snow White is interested. I'm going to introduce you to Paty the bighead.
  • El calambur: is a word game that, based on homonymy, paronymy or polysemy, consists of modifying the meaning of a word or phrase by grouping its syllables in different ways. For example: banana is / silver is not. Hello, my name is Enrique Cimiento (enrichment) (Wikipedia, 2016). "DON'T ECHE ME ENGLISH" disguised way of saying: "don't bother me, don't bother me or don't bother me." "Do you like him, that Son?" (Make reference to the preference for popular and traditional melodies in Mexico) and “Te gusta tiesezón” (It refers to the preference for an erect penis, as an alburera expression in Mexico).
  • Humor: They are all those experiences, sensations, representations and ways of understanding reality that have fun and joy as a story. Humor is directly related to the ability to generate entertainment in people, which is present in most situations through laughter. Humor is considered to be a capacity possessed by all human beings regardless of culture, the socio-economic or geographical environment in which they are inserted, although the mode of activation may not only vary from society to society, from culture to culture. but especially from individual to individual, thus becoming a highly complex and indescribable phenomenon in scientific terms (DefinitionABC, 2017).
  • Double sense: It is a literary figure in which a phrase can be understood in two ways, usually as a form of humor. The jokes are usually based on the double meaning, although they also use metaphors, common in poetry. This is also known as a word game (Wikipedia, 2016).

The nature of the game is maintained in adults

The essence of children's play was not only a hobby, it is maintained in adults through word play as in albur and all the linguistic strategies involved in it (Metonymy, Homonymy, Paronymy, Polysemy, Calambur, Humor, Double sense , witty words and more).

Playing brings many benefits in social interaction and in our physical and emotional health, it makes us: more creative, flexible, smiling, imaginative, innovative, emotional relationships are created, stimulates linguistic intelligence, makes us play different roles, activates our joy, affectivity, we improvise, we feel empowerment and freedom, but above all we experience pleasure and this activates our dopamine centers.

Neuroscience and humor

As soon as we hear something funny, the acoustic vibratory waves that traveled through the air are captured and transformed or transduced by the outer and inner ear and the temporal lobe is electrically stimulated. If we read something funny, the occipital lobe is stimulated and then we make sense of it with the left hemisphere related to the language areas.

The information is analyzed by Broca's area in charge of processing speech and subsequently goes to Wernicke's area, the one in charge of processing the linguistic structure of words (Metonymy, Homonymy, Paronymy, Polysemy, Calambur), she is in charge of finding him sense to what has been said, both are connected by a bundle of nerve fibers called the arcuate fasciculus.

Each brain hemisphere performs different functions. The left side is the specialist in understanding language and finding logic in it, while the right hemisphere is creative and can find funny information, both communicate at the base level also by another group of neurons called the corpus callosum..

The double meaning divides our attention, there are those who do not understand it and there are those who fish them in the air.

Like a comedic duo, the cerebral hemispheres play different roles in processing humor. The brain itself seems divided by puns. According to the study published in Laterality: Asymmetries of body, brain and cognition. The results suggest that the right and left hemispheres fulfill different tasks in the processing of these and that communication between them is essential to finish the joke. In a study carried out by Professor Lori Buchanan from the University of Windsor in Ontario, it was found that: the left hemisphere is in charge of processing most of the linguistic aspects of the word game, while the right is activated a little later to reveal the double meaning. This interaction allows us to understand the joke, as a form of word play, since it completes the basic form of humor; the sum of expectation and congruence, results in laughter. In double senses, where words take on ambiguous meanings, the context of the sentence prepares us to interpret the word specifically, a process that takes place in the left hemisphere. Laughter is unleashed when, a little later, the right hemisphere gives us clues about the other unexpected meaning of the word, unleashing what Buchanan describes as a surprising reinterpretation (Jacobson, 2016).

Richard Wiseman, Professor of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, London, found that the funniest and most universal jokes use puns to create an absurd situation (The Happy Brain, 2010).

What happens in our brain from when we are told the joke until we laugh?

In order to understand it, we activate the 3 layers of the brain. Reptilian brain (responsible for basic survival functions such as breathing), limbic brain (responsible for regulating emotions) and neocortex (responsible for reasoning).

First, we hear or read the words. Our hearing or sight receptors immediately send the data to the brain.

We capture the information read or heard with the areas of the left hemisphere (Broca's and Wernicke's areas) to understand the language and the logic of their structures, and we realize in the first attempt, whether what was heard or read makes sense or not. At that moment, it begins to sort the received data and tries to structure a logical ending to the story..

The left hemisphere communicates with the right hemisphere and in particular with the limbic brain in which a pleasant emotion is activated in the face of the absurd. To understand that absurdity, the information returns to the left hemisphere to the areas involved in language processing.

These areas are essential to understand the coherence of what we receive at the beginning of the story and later detect the incongruity of the joke. In order to verify the imagined and the unexpected end result, we also need to use short-term memory. It is a kind of neural network that stores our logical expectation of the story while we receive the information that at a certain moment makes an absurd turn, breaking our expectations. The logical and illogical meet in time and we see that it is absurd, and the absurd is funny. We find it amusing because our brain naturally has a so-called "error-announcing center", located in the mid-posterior area of ​​the frontal cortex. There the neurons are activated as soon as an action deviates from the right thing (El cerebro feliz, 2010).

If the brain detects errors, it rewards itself and the reward system (midbrain, ventral tegmental area, nucleus accumbens) is activated, which produces dopamine (the hormone of pleasure or happiness) and that signal reaches the prefrontal cortex. Then the reward system is in charge of putting the body in motion by stimulating the premotor cortex so that laughter occurs.

All the processes to understand the joke, find it funny and laugh are synchronized very quickly.

At the pun, men and women laugh alike?

Men and women process information differently. Comparing what happens in your brain when faced with the same jokes allows you to better understand the emotional component of the sense of humor. Women activate two more regions of the brain: the language areas and the one involved in short-term memory. Women generate more activity on the central switch of the reward system. The way the information is processed by the female brain achieves a greater integration between knowledge and emotion, which produces a very high response to pleasantness. On the other hand, the male brain, by not integrating the emotional component so much, expects a reward from the absurdity of the joke, whether it is funny or not. Wiseman's research concludes that they tell more jokes, but they enjoy humor more. (The Happy Brain, 2010).

Why don't all brains laugh at puns?

Clever words are supposed to start a laugh or a laugh, but that doesn't happen in all brains. If there is any structural or functional damage at the brain level in any of the areas involved in capturing and processing the joke, the witty words or a gamble, they will not understand it and also if we are not part of the political, economic, spiritual or socio-cultural context where they are expressed, it will be materially impossible to understand their meaning.

The pun or witty words have been present throughout our history, for example, the English playwright, poet and actor William Shakespeare was an expert in this:

  • It is better to be a king of your silence than a slave of your words.
  • Some are born great, some achieve greatness, some greatness is imposed on them and others greatness is great.
  • Fate is the one who shuffles the cards, but we are the ones who play.
  • The words are full of falsehood or art; the look is the language of the heart.

As a final reflection

  • For the brain, a play on words, a gamble or any kind of clever words is the same.
  • Playing with words (not exclusively with gambling) keeps our brain healthy and increases brain plasticity.
  • Finding fun things or not is very personal and also depends on the associated emotions.
  • Creatively occupying any of the linguistic modalities to socialize and communicate with others allows us to create more affective bonds. Do not confuse this concept with using rudeness to offend or denigrate, as this generates the opposite effect.
  • Injuries in some area of ​​the brain can produce an inability to understand linguistic structures and consequently not understand: sayings, albures or texts of greater complexity. Even having greater dominance of one of the hemispheres could be that someone does not understand jokes or albures.
  • When we play with words, we laugh and this keeps us healthier: it prevents heart disease by accelerating our heart rate, we generate endorphins and dopamine, bringing as a benefit a healthier immune system, lowering stress levels and its analgesic effect frees us from pain. It allows more air to enter our lungs and oxygenates the entire body. Against subtracts mental illnesses such as depression and anguish. It improves our social relationships and neutralizes negative emotions such as fear. Regulates blood pressure and cleanses our veins and arteries. Laughing is a pleasure and makes you healthier!

To know more, do not miss this book by Juan Antonio Barrera

References

Escobedo F. (2016) The albur is part of Mexican folklore, but only the most ingenious ones get the finest, consulted on April 20, 2017, online: https://www.redbulletin.com/mx/es/ culture / the-fine-art-of-alburear.

Jacobson R. (2016) Neuroscience: The double sense divides our attention, Inside the brain, Research and Science Magazine, December 2016, Number 483, Barcelona

Jiménez (1991) Signs, drawings and rude graffiti of Mexican mischief, Editorial Posada, Mexico.

Punset E. (2013) How did language emerge ?, Networks - Ask Punset, consulted on April 15, 2017, online: https://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/redes/redes-preguntale- punset-how-language-arose / 1912280 //

Ruiz L. (2014) Lourdes, the queen of albúr, the faces of our city, consulted on April 20, 2017, online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yHjrltpR7Y

Venemedia (2014) Definition of Metonymy, consulted on April 16, 2014, online: https://conbetodefinicion.de/metonimia//

Wikipedia (2017) Definition of Albur, consulted on April 16, 2017, online: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albur_(M%C3%A9xico)

Wikipedia (2016) Definition of Calambur, consulted on April 16, 2017, online: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calambur

Wikipedia (2016) Definition of double meaning, consulted on April 16, 2017, online: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doble_sentido

Wikilengua (2017) Definition of Homonymy, accessed April 16, 2017, online: http://www.wikilengua.org/index.php/Homonimia_y_polisemia

Wikipedia (2017) Definition of Polysemy, consulted on April 16, 2017, online: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polisemia


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