New Scientist studies the brain's comedy circuit:
[H]umour is a far more complex process than primeval pleasures like sex or food. In addition to the two core processes of getting the joke and feeling good about it, jokes also activate 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 - regions that are only present in humans and, in a less developed form, great apes.
Indeed, the fact that these regions are involved suggests that humour is an advanced ability which may have only evolved in early humans...
There is something of the divine in it.
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