Thursday, 11. December 2003

Topic: DRUGS - on December 11, 2003 at 6:31:53 PM CET

Jokes activate same brain region as cocaine

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).

¬> nature

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