第1自然段

The joke comes over the headphones: ‘Which side of a dog has the most hair? The left.’ No, not funny. Try again. ‘Which side of a dog has the most hair? The outside.’ Hah! The punchline is silly yet fitting, tempting a smile, even a laugh. Laughter has always struck people as deeply mysterious, perhaps pointless. The writer Arthur Koestler dubbed it the luxury reflex: ‘unique in that it serves no apparent biological purpose’.

段落1：笑声总是被人们视为深奥而神秘的，也许有些毫无意义。作家阿瑟·科斯特勒（Arthur Koestler）称其为奢侈反射：“其独特之处在于它似乎没有明显的生物学目的”。

第2自然段

Theories about humour have an ancient pedigree. Plato expressed the idea that humour is simply a delighted feeling of superiority over others. Kant and Freud felt that joke-telling relies on building up a psychic tension which is safely punctured by the ludicrousness of the punchline. But most modern humour theorists have settled on some version of Aristotle’s belief that jokes are based on a reaction to or resolution of incongruity, when the punchline is either a nonsense or, though appearing silly, has a clever second meaning.

段落2：关于幽默的理论源远流长。柏拉图认为幽默只是对他人的优越感的愉快感受。康德和弗洛伊德认为讲笑话依赖于通过滑稽的结尾安全地解决了心理紧张感。但是，大多数现代幽默理论家都接受亚里士多德的观点，即笑话基于对不协调的反应或解决办法，当结尾要么是荒谬的，要么是看似愚蠢但有巧妙的第二层含义。

第3自然段

Graeme Ritchie, a computational linguist in Edinburgh, studies the linguistic structure of jokes in order to understand not only humour but language understanding and reasoning in machines. He says that while there is no single format for jokes, many revolve around a sudden and surprising conceptual shift. A comedian will present a situation followed by an unexpected interpretation that is also apt.

段落3：爱丁堡的计算语言学家格雷姆·里程（Graeme Ritchie）研究笑话的语言结构，以便不仅理解幽默，还能理解机器在语言理解和推理方面的能力。他表示，虽然笑话没有单一的格式，但很多笑话都围绕着突然而出人意料的观念转变。一个喜剧演员会提出一种情境，然后呈现一个意外的解释，这个解释也是贴切的。

第4自然段

So even if a punchline sounds silly, the listener can see there is a clever semantic fit and that sudden mental ‘Aha!’ is the buzz that makes us laugh. Viewed from this angle, humour is just a form of creative insight, a sudden leap to a new perspective.

段落4：因此，即使笑话听起来愚蠢，听众也能看到其中巧妙的语义契合，而这种突然的“啊哈！”就是让我们笑出声的原因。从这个角度来看，幽默只是一种创造性洞察力的表现，是对新视角的突然跳跃。

第5自然段

However, there is another type of laughter, the laughter of social appeasement and it is important to understand this too. Play is a crucial part of development in most young mammals. Rats produce ultrasonic squeaks to prevent their scuffles turning nasty. Chimpanzees have a ‘play-face’ – a gaping expression accompanied by a panting ‘ah, ah’ noise. In humans, these signals have mutated into smiles and laughs. Researchers believe social situations, rather than cognitive events such as jokes, trigger these instinctual markers of play or appeasement. People laugh on fairground rides or when tickled to flag a play situation, whether they feel amused or not.

段落5：然而，还有另一种笑声，那就是社交安抚的笑声，了解这一点也很重要。在大多数幼年哺乳动物中，游戏是发展的重要组成部分。老鼠发出超声波尖叫声，以防止争吵升级到恶性行为。黑猩猩有一种“游戏面孔”，伴随着喘息的“啊，啊”声。在人类中，这些信号已经演化成微笑和笑声。研究人员认为，触发这些游戏或安抚的本能信号的是社交情境，而不是认知事件，比如笑话。人们玩游乐场游乐设施时或被挠痒痒时笑出声来，是为了标志一个游戏情境，无论他们是否感到有趣。

第6自然段

Both social and cognitive types of laughter tap into the same expressive machinery in our brains, the emotion and motor circuits that produce smiles and excited vocalisations. However, if cognitive laughter is the product of more general thought processes, it should result from more expansive brain activity.

段落6：社交和认知两种类型的笑声都利用了我们大脑中的同一表达机制，即产生微笑和兴奋的语言和动作回路。然而，如果认知笑声是更一般思维过程的产物，它应该会引起更广泛的大脑活动。

第7自然段

Psychologist Vinod Goel investigated humour using the new technique of ‘single event’ functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). An MRI scanner uses magnetic fields and radio waves to track the changes in oxygenated blood that accompany mental activity. Until recently, MRI scanners needed several minutes of activity and so could not be used to track rapid thought processes such as comprehending a joke. New developments now allow half-second ‘snapshots’ of all sorts of reasoning and problem-solving activities.

段落7：心理学家Vinod Goel使用“单事件”功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）技术对幽默进行了研究。MRI扫描仪利用磁场和射频波追踪伴随着心理活动的含氧血液的变化。直到最近，MRI扫描仪需要几分钟的活动时间，因此无法用于追踪像理解笑话这样的快速思维过程。新的技术发展现在可以拍摄半秒钟的各种推理和问题解决活动的“快照”。

第8自然段

Although Goel felt being inside a brain scanner was hardly the ideal place for appreciating a joke, he found evidence that understanding a joke involves a widespread mental shift. His scans showed that at the beginning of a joke the listener’s prefrontal cortex lit up, particularly the right prefrontal believed to be critical for problem solving. But there was also activity in the temporal lobes at the side of the head (consistent with attempts to rouse stored knowledge) and in many other brain areas. Then when the punchline arrived, a new area sprang to life – the orbital prefrontal cortex. This patch of brain tucked behind the orbits of the eyes is associated with evaluating information.

段落8：尽管Goel认为处在大脑扫描仪内并不是欣赏笑话的理想场所，但他发现理解笑话涉及到一种广泛的思维转变。他的扫描结果显示，在笑话开始时，听众的前额叶皮层亮起，尤其是被认为对问题解决至关重要的右前额叶。但是，头部两侧的颞叶（与唤起存储知识的尝试一致）和许多其他脑区也有活动。然后当结尾出现时，一个新的区域变得活跃起来——眼窝后面的额叶皮层。这个位于眼眶后面的脑区与评估信息有关。

第9自然段

Making a rapid emotional assessment of the events of the moment is an extremely demanding job for the brain, animal or human. Energy and arousal levels may need to be retuned in the blink of an eye. These abrupt changes will produce either positive or negative feelings. The orbital cortex, the region that becomes active in Goel’s experiment, seems the best candidate for the site that feeds such feelings into higher-level thought processes, with its close connections to the brain’s sub-cortical arousal apparatus and centres of metabolic control.

段落9：对当前事件进行快速情感评估对大脑来说是一项极具挑战性的任务，无论是动物还是人类。能量和激活水平可能需要在眨眼之间进行微调，这些突然的变化会产生积极或消极的感受。Goel实验中活跃的轨道皮层似乎是将这种感受输入到更高级的思维过程中的最佳候选区域，它与大脑的皮层下兴奋装置和代谢控制中心有着紧密的连接。

第10自然段

All warm-blooded animals make constant tiny adjustments in arousal in response to external events, but humans, who have developed a much more complicated internal life as a result of language, respond emotionally not only to their surroundings, but to their own thoughts. Whenever a sought-for answer snaps into place, there is a shudder of pleased recognition. Creative discovery being pleasurable, humans have learned to find ways of milking this natural response. The fact that jokes tap into our general evaluative machinery explains why the line between funny and disgusting, or funny and frightening, can be so fine. Whether a joke gives pleasure or pain depends on a person’s outlook.

段落10：所有恒温动物都会对外部事件作出不断微小的激活调整，但是由于语言的结果，人类对自己的思维以及周围环境作出情感回应。每当一个被寻找的答案迅速成为明了时，都会有一种愉快认可的颤动。由于创造性发现是令人愉悦的，人类已经学会找到方法来利用这种自然反应。笑话之所以能够触动我们的普遍评估机制，解释了为什么好笑和令人恶心、好笑和令人恐惧之间的界限如此微妙。一则笑话给人带来快乐还是痛苦取决于一个人的观点。

第11自然段

Humour may be a luxury, but the mechanism behind it is no evolutionary accident. As Peter Derks, a psychologist at William and Mary College in Virginia, says: ‘I like to think of humour as the distorted mirror of the mind. It’s creative, perceptual, analytical and lingual. If we can figure out how the mind processes humour, then we’ll have a pretty good handle on how it works in general.’