How Do Festive Cracker Gags Do to The Brain?

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

This one-liner is met by moans that resonate through a storage facility in the capital.

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a company that makes supplies for social events. Its repertoire includes Christmas crackers.

The company's owner grins, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will feature in future crackers.

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

The secret to a good Christmas cracker joke is not the same as a good gag per se. It is entirely about the context - in this instance, the communal laughter of the Christmas meal with grandparents, kids and possibly neighbours.

"You want the joke to be a thing that unites the child in harmony with the grandparent," she states.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Laughter

Gathering to experience shared laughter is not only nothing new, scientists say, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are laughing with people at the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a really ancient mammalian social sound," says a neuroscience expert.

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

Scientists have discovered that a absence of these interactions can significantly harm both psychological and bodily well-being.

"The people you talk to, and share laughter with, it leads to enhanced levels of endorphin uptake," she continues.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a truly awful festive cracker joke.

"You're not just laughing at a silly joke with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the really important work of building, preserving the social bonds you have with the people you love."

Which Occurs Inside the Mind?

But what is actually happening inside the brain when we listen to a joke?

An awful lot occurs in reaction to comedy, it turns out.

Employing brain scanning technology, a kind of neural imager which indicates which areas of the brain are more active, researchers have been able to chart the areas that receive more blood flow.

The research involves imaging the minds of healthy participants and then subjecting them to a collection of funny words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we observed a really fascinating activation pattern of activation," says the professor.

A joke activates not just the parts of the mind in charge of auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also brain areas associated with both planning and starting movement and those involved in sight and memory.

Put these elements together, and people listening to a pun have a sophisticated set of neural responses that underpin the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Researchers discovered that when a funny phrase is combined with laughter there is a greater reaction in the brain than the identical word when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in parts of the brain that you would use to contort your face into a grin or a laugh," the professor says.

It means people are not just responding to humorous words, they are reacting to the laughter that follows them.

Laughter, according to the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles found at a holiday table?

"People laugh more when you are familiar with others," she says, "and you laugh further when you like them or care for them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she says, the feel-good factor is more probable to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the response to it.

"The laughter is key. The joke is the terrible holiday cracker pun, and it's just a pretext to laugh as a group."

The Quest for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Will we ever find the ultimate gag?

Likely not, but that has not prevented experts from attempting to.

Years ago, a psychologist established a research search for the world's most humorous joke.

Over tens of thousands of jokes later, with scores lodged by 350,000 participants globally, he has a better idea than many as to what succeeds and what does not.

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

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

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

"The reason is that if no-one finds it funny – it's the joke's fault, not yours.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker jokes is that none of us considers them funny.

"That's a common experience around the gathering and I believe it's wonderful."