Witzelsucht, the condition that makes you pun

Everyone loves a good gag, right? I mean, why else do people buy crackers? Seeing as this is science, here are a few relevant ones:

   A proton checks into a hotel and is asked if he needs any help with his luggage. “No,” he says, “I’m travelling light.”

   Do I know any jokes about sodium? Na.

   Never trust any atom – they make up everything.

   You get the idea with this, right? Well, for some people out there, this is life.

Witzelsucht (from German, literally translating as ‘wisecrack addiction’) is a bunch of rare neurological symptoms which are characterised by a tendency to make puns, and to tell unsuitable jokes and pointless stories in socially inappropriate situations. A less common side effect is that of hypersexuality – the victim’s jokes become highly sexualised all of the time, as in the case of one 56-year-old man (doctors were not able to conduct tests due to the sheer stream of filth coming out of his mouth).

Interestingly, despite their propensity for non-stop gags (to the extent that they are physically unable to stop joking no matter what), sufferers of witzelsucht often lack the ability to appreciate the jokes of others – they cannot show an emotional reaction to humour, even when they understand that a joke is funny.

Witzelsucht is rarely diagnosed, and is seen most commonly in patients with frontal lobe damage, especially right frontal lobe tumours or trauma. The frontal lobe of the brain controls our personalities, and this is one manifestation of the damage (to the right side, that is – hits on the left may render a person depressed and angry, as opposed to the often-euphoric nature of someone with right-side damage). This part of the brain is also the seat of more complex and analytical thought – a consequence of this is that witzelsucht sufferers often find slapstick humour and puns the funniest, and often fail to appreciate more complex and multi-layered jokes.

Laughter helps us to affirm friendships and distinguish different social groups

All this discussion of humour leads to a very interesting question – why are jokes funny? Theories of humour date back to the ancient Greeks, and the most common one is the incongruity-resolution theory. The idea here is that humour results from an incongruity between our assumptions and reality and then laughter occurs when we resolve the inconsistencies. The punchline takes an unexpected turn, and your brain has to jump through a series of hoops to unpick the logic and understand it. There is a moment of discovery, and this resolution gets your brain’s pleasure centres going.

It is necessary to note, however, that that this is only a theory, and in a study of laughter by Robert Provine, only 20% resulted from jokes. Laughter also has an important biological function – it helps us to affirm friendships and distinguish different social groups (you’ll laugh at others, but don’t like to be laughed at), and it serves as a way for the brain to deal with many types of confusion (soldiers at Yucca Flats in the 1950s reported that laughter was their first reaction to being caught in a nuclear blast).

The study of humour led British psychologist Richard Wiseman to search for the funniest joke in the world – he compiled a massive database of gags and asked millions of people to rate. There was a massive divide on cruder jokes – some loved them, some hated them – and he also came up with some interesting findings. The animal statistically likeliest to be funny is the duck (presumably because they’ll quack you up), and Americans prefer jokes that slightly aggressive in tone.

Obviously, comedy is a very subjective thing, but I present to you Wiseman’s funniest joke:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He’s not breathing and his eyes are glazed, so his friend calls 911. “My friend is dead! What should I do?” The operator replies, “Calm down, sir. I can help. First make sure that he’s dead.” There’s a silence, then a loud bang. Back on the phone, the guy says, “Ok, now what?”