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    Further research, conducted by Dean Mobbs, then at Stanford University in California, uncovered a second point of activity in brain's limbic system-associated with dopamine release and reward processing - which may explain the pleasure felt once you "get" the joke. Examining on particular part of the limbic system - the ventral striatum - was especially revealing, as its level of activity coresponded with the perceived funniness of a joke. "It's the same region that is involved in many different types of reward, from drugs, to sex and our favourite music;' says Mobbs, now at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, UK. "Humour thus taps into basic reward systems that are important of our survival.

    Yet humour a far more multifaceted process than primeval pleasure like food. In addition the two core processes of getting the joke and feeling good about it, jokes also active regions of the frontal and cingulate cortex, which are linked with association formation, learning and decision-making. The team also found heightened activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and the frontoinsular cortex - region that are only present in humans and, in a less developed form, great apes. Indeed, the fact that these regions are involved suggest that humour is an advanced ability which may have only evolved in early human, says Watson, who conducted the research.

    No two brains are the same, however, and how these differences are reflected in our sense of humour is the subject of much research. Men and women, for example, seem to process jokes slightly differently. Although both sexes laugh at roughly the same number of jokes, women show greater activity in the left prefrontal cortex than men. "This suggests a greater degree of executive processing and language - based decoding;' says Mobbs. As result, women take significantly much longer those men to decide whether they find something funny, though that does not seem to spoil their enjoyment of the joke. Indeed, women show a greater response in the limbic system than men, suggesting they feel a greater sense of reward.

The part that comes before the text would most likely describes ____.