Humour: comedy cell lies in the mind, finds study

An international team, led by researchers at Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, has carried out the study and discovered what it claims is a comedy brain cell which in fact responds to humour.

According to researchers, a person’s brain fires when he or she watches, say a comedy scene in a movie, and go into action once again as that individual recalls the same episode, ‘The Daily Telegraph’ reported.

They came to the conclusion after analysing the mind of 13 epilepsy patients who had electrodes implanted into their brains at California University’s medical centre to help find where their seizures start.

The same electrodes could be used to monitor single brain cells in the brain’s hippocampus, a structure known to play a central role in memory, and related structures as the clips played.

As the people freely recalled a comedy show minutes later they saw the episode, the researchers found that the same brain cells increased their firing rate again, and with amazing specificity.

Remarkably, the cells sprang to life even before the people told the researchers that the memory of the show had “come to mind” by 1.5 thousandths of a second, suggesting a direct link between free recall and the “replay” of cells in this portion of the brain.

The study has been published in the latest edition of the ‘science’ journal.