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december 04, 2003
Jokes activates same brain region as cocaine
Jokes activates same brain region as cocaine.
Humour tickles drug centre that gives hedonistic high
There's truth in the maxim 'laughter is a drug'. A comic cartoon fired up the same brain centre as a shot of cocaine, researchers are reporting.
A team at Stanford University in California asked lab mates, spouses and friends to select the wittiest newspaper cartoons from a portfolio. They showed the winning array to 16 volunteers while peering inside their heads by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
The cartoons activated the same reward circuits in the brain that are tickled by cocaine, money or a pretty face, the neuroscientists found.
...
[Allan] Reiss hopes that the finding could help to diagnose the early stages of depression - or show whether antidepressants are taking effect - during which people's appreciation of humour is altered. "That would be a terrific way to use this type of work," he says.
Se vidare:
Artikeln som refereras: Humor Modulates the Mesolimbic Reward Centers (tidskriften Neuron)
Allan L. Reiss
William H (Bill) Kelley
Posted by hakank at december 4, 2003 08:59 FM Posted to Diverse