人的喜怒哀乐都与大脑有关，而在我们“笑”的时候大脑和身体会发生怎样的变化呢?下面的新托福考试阅读练习资料会与大家讨论这个话题。
Did you ever wonder what occurs inside your body when something funny happens? What is this thing we have in our brains that makes us say “ha-ha” when someone slips on a banana?
One way to find out is to watch the brain laugh. That’s what Dartmouth neuroscientist William Kelley did. He and his team had a number of volunteers watch an episode of Seinfeld while being monitored by an MRI–that’s a machine that allows researchers to see which parts of the brain are active at any given time. They then synchronized the MRI data with the laugh track to see how the brain changes when it’s registering something funny. There’s no one “funny center” in the brain–but the findings were pretty suggestive.
When subjects were looking at something funny, the two regions in their left hemispheres lit up. From previous studies these regions are known to be associated with resolving ambiguity. Is there something in “getting it” that’s related to the process by which we work with unclear information until we suddenly see the pattern in it?
A couple seconds later two other brain regions became active, called the insula and the amygdala. The insula is associated with emotion, so it seems likely that this is the brain feeling good when it gets the joke–the “ha-ha” response.
The amygdala is associated with memory formation. As the researchers point out, while you may not be able to remember every plot detail in a Seinfeld episode, you can probably remember the jokes. Humor stays with us, forming a lasting memory. Get it?
你有没有想过当一些有趣的事情发生的时候，你身体内部会发生怎样的变化呢?当我们看到有人踩到香蕉皮摔倒会“哈哈”大笑，那到底是什么让我们做出这样的反应呢?
找出答案的方法之一就是观察大脑。达特茅斯神经学家威廉•凯利就做了这样的实验。他让许多志愿者观看了一集“宋飞正传”，同时监测他们的核磁共振成像。这样研究人员就能看到任一特定时段大脑的哪个部分是活跃的。然后研究远让磁共振数据与笑的轨迹同步，观察当有趣的事情发生时大脑的变化。大脑内没有“滑稽中心”这样一个地方——但结果很有启发。
当注意到有趣的事情时，左大脑半球的两个区域就会兴奋。从前面的研究中我们得知，这些区域是与解决歧义有关的。明白滑稽事情与我们处理不了解的信息过程有关系吗?
几秒钟后，其它两个区域就会变活跃，这两个区域叫脑岛和扁桃腺。脑岛与情感有关，因此很有可能是大脑接收到笑话时感觉很好，然后做出“哈哈“大笑的反应。
扁桃腺与记忆的形成有关，正如研究人员指出，尽管你不能记住”宋飞记“的每一个情节，但能记住其中的笑话。幽默能够保持形成一个长久的记忆。明白了吗?