I've written a bit about humor before on this blog. Thanks to George for this interesting link to an article on the neuroscience of humor: The comedy circuit: When your brain gets the joke by Daniel Elkan.
An intriguing part of the article (for me at least) is how neuroscience is beginning to examine how different forms of humor affect us. For example:
Most types of humour, including jokes and cartoons, rely on some kind of incongruity between two elements that needs a second's thought before it can be understood. The extent to which this mismatch can be resolved differs between jokes, however.I've always been a fan of random humor, the inexplicable juxtaposition.
Some have a clean punchline that ties up all the loose ends, while in "nonsense" humour the incongruity can only be partially resolved, leaving a gap in the person's understanding.
