Pun Processing in the Brain: What’s Hap-punning?

Kenneth Do Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology

This article was the 1st place winner in the 9th-10th grade division of the Teknos 2020 Summer Writing Competition.

Earlier this year in English class, I told a pun. We were reading a book by Erich Maria Remarque called All Quiet on the Western Front, and my teacher posed a question to the class. My classmate soon replied with an idea, and in a moment of inspiration, I commented, “That’s an interesting Remarque.” While I felt that my pun on the author’s name was brilliant, my classmate thought otherwise and let out an unsatisfied groan. His impression of puns is one that many people share—the device is unsophisticated and generally unfunny. Although the second point is debatable, the first could not be further from the truth. Influenced by brain chemistry, health, and even gender differences, puns have far-reaching implications—and they’re certainly more than just antics.

While puns can be visual, they are more often heard than seen, and every sound—whether it’s a pun, a music note, or the honk of a car—begins as the vibration of air molecules [8]. Our sense of hearing depends on the ear’s ability to capture these vibrations and direct them towards the brain, where auditory processing can occur. Each ear is divided into three general regions—the outer, middle, and inner ear. The first two regions conduct and amplify incoming sound waves [4]. The role of the inner ear, however, is unique. Rather than simply passing on sound waves, the inner ear takes advantage of sensory neurons called hair cells that bend in response to vibrations. This step is critical—the bending phenomenon allows ions to diffuse in and out of the hair cells and form charges, a process known as transduction. Since neurons cannot directly make use of the mechanical energy of sound waves, transduction allows the cells to communicate through electrical signals called action potentials [2]. This energy conversion paves the way for the second phase of sound processing, and for that, it app-ear-s, we turn to the brain.

To provide context, the brain is divided into the left and right hemispheres, and each hemisphere is further split into four sections, or lobes. Different lobes control different actions that the body can carry out. For instance, the brain’s occipital lobes (back of the brain) are responsible for processing visual cues while the frontal lobes (front of the brain) oversee planning, decision-making, and other higher-level functions [1].

Relevant to pun processing are the temporal lobes, positioned in front of the occipital lobes and behind the frontal lobes. Specifically, the left temporal lobe is home to the Wernicke’s area, a neuron cluster that enables us to comprehend language. The Wernicke’s area is the difference between hearing an unintelligible string of sounds and following a conversation—or a pun. The counterpart to the Wernicke’s area is the Broca’s area. Embedded in the left frontal lobe, the Broca’s area mediates the production of language, as opposed to its comprehension [2]. Together, these two areas form the neurological basis of language; while the Broca’s area allows us to create catchy puns, the Wernicke’s area lets us lobe them.

It’s clear that structures in the brain drive our capacity to interpret sound and language, but puns are more than just language. Where does wordplay fit into the greater picture of typical language processing, and why is a pun often more memorable than a conversation about the weather? These are two of many questions that John Pollack aimed to answer in his book The Pun Also Rises, an explanation of the history and implications of punning. In the second chapter, Pollack analyzes the neuroscience that fuels puns, explaining that the device is more complex than we might think. In reality, pun processing engages multiple regions between both hemispheres of the brain. As expected, the brain initially activates its left hemisphere, the side of the brain containing language-oriented clusters. Interestingly, the brain then passes on the task to the right hemisphere, whose role is to access relevant contextual information to complete the processing [7]. For a punster, however, creating puns that an audience can understand isn’t difficult—the challenge lies in making someone laugh. This humorous aspect of wordplay relies on a concept called the incongruity-resolution theory. The theory states that humor arises from an expectation (the setup of a joke) undermined by an absurd situation (the punchline). In puns, this incongruity is semantic, or word-oriented. When the brain makes sense of the incongruity, reward-specific neurons release dopamine, a neurotransmitter recognized for its role in motivation and pleasure [2, 5]. Thus, your relationship with puns depends on how much dopamine is expressed when you hear one—making you either a pun skeptic or an avid cons-humor.

Admittedly, the neuroscience of puns seems far from relevant to modern science. Learning how wordplay interacts with the brain will not send us to Mars or cure cancer. Still, the field has proved surprisingly insightful. While most people pun playfully, for some, it’s a compulsion. Termed witzelsucht, pathological punning most often occurs following damage to the right frontal lobe. Intriguingly, this lobe contains the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which is involved in response inhibition. Your PFC is the reason why you don’t speak loudly when watching a movie, cross the street when you see a car, or pun at inappropriate times [2]. In addition to providing insight into brain anatomy, cases of witzelsucht have prompted researchers to examine treatment options. With each disorder comes a potential medication, and witzelsucht is no exception. For this affliction, neuropsychiatrists most often prescribe SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), a treatment that increases levels of a mood-regulating neurotransmitter called serotonin in the brain [3]. However, SSRIs are not always effective, so further research into how puns are processed is vital to treating witzelsucht, bringing us closer to a day when punning will not di-seize innocent people.

Nevertheless, despite how peculiar the disorder seems, witzelsucht exemplifies an idea that’s not so peculiar—as no two people are the same, no two people interact with puns in the same way. In a 2004 Stanford study that Pollack references later in his book, twenty people were asked to view and rate a series of cartoons while their brain activity was monitored (admittedly, cartoons are not puns, but since both are semantic and therefore depend on semantic incongruity, the results from the study can be extended to puns). One of the most significant results of the experiment revealed that women experienced higher average dopamine outputs after viewing the cartoons than men—compared to men, women found the same set of jokes more funny [7]. In the chapter, Pollack admits that scientists are unsure why evolution might favor this trait, but a paper by Nature Human Behavior sheds light on the surprising result. As it describes, women tend to be more prosocial—“generous, altruistic, and inequality-averse”—than men. And just as in the Stanford study, the Nature researchers found that dopamine was the driving force behind the behavioral differences. Reward systems in the brains of women were more sensitive than those of men when posed with the task of sharing [9]. These results are dope, I mean, but why might the traits be useful?

From an evolutionary standpoint, the two results fit together nicely. Primitive gender roles likely preferred women who seemed to be more capable of fostering a child. The skill of caregiving relies primarily on an altruistic personality, so to receive pleasure from prosocial behaviors would have been advantageous. As for the first result, being humorous is an extension if not a quintessential aspect of being prosocial. As Pollack highlights, to joke is to bond, and building relationships—whether it was mother to child, partner to partner, or simply person to person—was essential to the wellbeing of a group [7]. Similarly, then, the tendency to appreciate humor would have been a valuable trait for a woman to pass on to her offspring. Earlier, it was established that an individual’s relationship with puns depends on how dopamine is expressed. The two studies build on this conclusion, making it clear that that expression varies based on gender. Women are wired to enjoy social circumstances, semantic humor, and puns more than men: at least in gender-al.

Experts and everyday people alike generalize the pun as the lowest form of humor—an unrefined attempt at scoring a few laughs. But from simple knock-knock jokes to Shakespearean monologues to memorable one-liners in advertising, puns hold an integral role in humor and communication. My classmate immediately groaned upon hearing my pun, but what he failed to recognize was the extraordinary feat of cooperation between his ear and brain that allowed him to even get the joke. A pun may seem like no more than a unfunny device, but in actuality it is no less than a scientific marvel and equally as valuable as any other type of joke. So the next time you hap-pun to hear a line of wordplay, o-pun up to it, and you might just find it pun-ny.

References

[1] Anatomy of the brain. (n.d.). Johns Hopkins Medicine. Retrieved July 28, 2020, from https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/anatomy-of-the-brain

[2] Brain facts. (2018). Society for Neuroscience.

[3] Granadillo, E. D., & Mendez, M. F. (2016). Pathological joking or witzelsucht revisited. The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 28(3). https://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.neuropsych.15090238?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dpubmed&

[4] How do we hear? (2018, January 3). National Institutes on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Retrieved July 27, 2020, from https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/how-do-we-hear

[5] Humor, laughter, and those aha moments. (2010, Spring). The Harvard Mahoney Neuroscience Institute Letter, 16(2), 1-3. https://hms.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/HMS_OTB_Spring10_Vol16_No2.pdf

[6] [Lobes of the brain]. (2018, July 17). The University of Queensland. https://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain/brain-anatomy/lobes-brain

[7] Pollack, J. (n.d.). The pun also rises. Penguin Random House.

[8] The science of sound. (n.d.). NASA. Retrieved July 27, 2020, from https://www.nasa.gov/specials/X59/science-of-sound.html

[9] Soutschek, A., Burke, C.J., Raja Beharelle, A. et al. The dopaminergic reward system underpins gender differences in social preferences. Nat Hum Behav 1, 819–827 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0226-y