{"id":4915,"date":"2003-12-07T08:44:11","date_gmt":"2003-12-07T15:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=4915"},"modified":"2003-12-07T08:44:11","modified_gmt":"2003-12-07T15:44:11","slug":"comic_relief_5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/12\/07\/comic_relief_5.html","title":{"rendered":"Comic relief"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is laughter the best medicine? Well, at least it feels <\/i>pretty swell<\/a>, according to a new study.<\/p>\n

The results, published in the journal Neuron<\/i>, show that, in addition to activating areas associated with the perception and production of language, humour activates a network of brain structures associated with known reward systems.
\nAmusing cartoons activated a region of the brain, called the nucleus accumbens, that has previously been linked with happiness and with cocaine- and amphetamine-induced euphoria.<\/p>\n

Whoa. Good comedy, man.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is laughter the best medicine? Well, at least it feels pretty swell, according to a new study. The results, published in the journal Neuron, show that, in addition to activating…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11655,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/07\/25\/bad_soda.html","url_meta":{"origin":4915,"position":0},"title":"Bad soda","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 25-Jul-07 11:17am","format":false,"excerpt":"Another study on how soda consumption is associated with Bad Things ... though this one had a twist (and not of lemon): Adults who consume at least one soft drink...","rel":"","context":"In "Food & Drink"","block_context":{"text":"Food & Drink","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/food-drink"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7941,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/07\/18\/you_cant_believ.html","url_meta":{"origin":4915,"position":1},"title":"You can’t believe everything you read","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 18-Jul-05 6:36am","format":false,"excerpt":"About a third of published scientific studies turn out to be wrong. The sobering conclusion came in a review of major studies published in three influential medical journals between 1990...","rel":"","context":"In "Science & Nature"","block_context":{"text":"Science & Nature","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/science"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6410,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/09\/07\/disbelieved_in.html","url_meta":{"origin":4915,"position":2},"title":"Disbelieved in his Dog","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 7-Sep-04 3:54pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Reading evidently (based on brain imagery) takes place in different parts of the brain based on culture and writing -- which implies that dyslexia and other reading disorders don't function...","rel":"","context":"In "Science & Nature"","block_context":{"text":"Science & Nature","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/science"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6042,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/06\/02\/not_a_prayer.html","url_meta":{"origin":4915,"position":3},"title":"Not a prayer","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 2-Jun-04 11:12am","format":false,"excerpt":"A famous study, published in the Columbia University Medical Center Journal of Reproductive Medicine in October 2001, purporting to prove (or at least indicate) the efficacy of intercessory prayer, looks...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13950,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/02\/27\/the-geek-diet-should-work.html","url_meta":{"origin":4915,"position":4},"title":"The Geek Diet should work","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 27-Feb-09 8:11pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Amongst all the various fad diets mixing and matching proteins (lots or little), carbs (ditto), fat (generally low), a big study just published at the New England Journal of Medicine confirms that the results ... ... are all pretty much the same, and the same as simply cutting back on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Health Science"","block_context":{"text":"Health Science","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/health\/health-science"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10100,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/09\/05\/quote_of_the_da.html","url_meta":{"origin":4915,"position":5},"title":"Quote of the Day","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 5-Sep-06 10:14am","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Looks like I picked a bad week to stop consuming mass quantities of frozen dairy confection.\" And, coincidentally, here's some cheery news: Next time you go out for that big...","rel":"","context":"In "Food & Drink"","block_context":{"text":"Food & Drink","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/food-drink"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}