Interesting news from the Weizmann Institute about how “aha” moments, when we suddenly see how something makes sense, stick in the memory better than things we study to remember. That flash of insight is worth more than an hour of learning. Why? The difference seems to be the action of the amygdala–that almond sized part of the brain that is the “fear center” but also seems to be tied to positive emotions. It is well known that emotionally laden memories, or memories of intense experiences, stick better. The amygdala seems to provide that emotion to a moment of insight.
This is in line with my longtime belief that we are wired to get pleasure from understanding, and that a very quick coming together of cognitively disparate concepts is intensely pleasurable. The faster the connection and the wider the cognitive distance between ideas (for lack of a better word) the more intense the dopamine hit. Which is the basis for humor. I feel that jokes, riddles and humor in general are a biproduct of the brain’s drive to make sense of the world, an activity that is reinforced through a strong kick of pleasure.
If this seems obvious, it should be noted that many neuroscientists, like Pinker, continue to believe in a version of Freud’s theories that humor has to come at someone else’s expense, the it has to demean someone, preferably the mighty. Even if the joke is about an object, they think that we get pleasure from the joke because we degrade our idea of the object. On the contrary, I think that we get pleasure from such jokes because our idea of the object is suddenly linked to a much larger or totally different family of objects. If I have time I will write a post with examples.