Here’s a dirty little secret about learning that you’ve probably always known, but that nobody really talks about: Even just thinking about learning something you aren’t partial to, like studying math, activates the insular cortex—a pain center of the brain.6 Humor can counterbalance this pain—it activates the brain’s opioid reward systems.7 (Yes, humor is like drugging yourself—but in a healthy way.) Humor has an incongruity that makes unexpected neural connections—different types of humor can activate very different parts of the brain.8 Perhaps, then, humor is the neural equivalent of
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