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January 31st, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda TUESDAY, Jan. 31 (HealthDay News) — Specific areas of children’s
brains that are activated by humor have been identified by researchers in
a first-of-a-kind study.
The findings, published Feb. 1 in the Journal of Neuroscience,
will provide a base for understanding how humor and other positive
emotions can affect a child’s well-being, according to the Stanford
University School of Medicine team.
“Humor is a very important component of emotional health, maintaining
relationships, developing cognitive [brain] function and perhaps even
medical health,” senior study author Dr. Allan Reiss, director of the
Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research at Stanford, said in
a university news release.
A strong sense of humor is an important part of positive emotion and
may help children to be more resilient, he noted.
“In particular, we think a balanced and consistent sense of humor may
help children negotiate the difficult period of pre-adolescence and
adolescence,” Reiss said.
The researchers used functional MRI to scan the brains of 15 children,
aged 6 to 12, while they watched short video clips that were categorized
as funny, positive or neutral. The positive clips were rewarding to watch
but not funny. The neutral clips were neither rewarding nor funny.
The brain scans showed that the funny videos activated two regions of
the children’s brains that also respond to humor in adults. However, these
circuits aren’t as developed in children.
Humor activated the children’s mesolimbic regions, which process
rewards, and the temporal-occipital-parietal junction, which processes
perceived incongruities. Incongruities are things that go together that
represent opposites (for example, many clowns emerging from a tiny
car).
The positive videos activated the reward-processing area but not the
area that processes incongruity. This suggests that incongruity — a
surprise for the brain — is an important factor in humor, the researchers
concluded.
“Negative emotional states such as depression or anxiety are compelling
to study, but you can’t completely understand why a child has emotional
stability or instability until you look at both sides of the coin,” Reiss
said in the news release. “This work is setting the stage for helping us
look at how humor predicts resilience and well-being.”
More information
The American Psychiatric Association offers an overview of children’s mental health.
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