Gender Differences in Humor

In 2005, Allan Reiss, MD, understood an imaging study to show how men and women cognitively experience humor. 

The study showed that for women the areas of the brain that are activated while processing "humorous comics" include language processing and working memory components of the brain. Women also reportedly responded with greater intensity with respect to novel experiences. 

These results indicate that men and women differ in how much they appreciate humor and how they process it. Interestingly enough, when men were "expecting" humor, their brain's reward center was not as significantly activated as was with the case of the women in the study. Reiss pointed out that "If subsequent studies show that women's reward center and other regions of the brain are more sensitive to emotional stimuli, including negative stimuli, that could help explain why depression strikes twice as many women as men, potentially leading to new therapies." 

Reiss's study, for the first time, showed that the mesolimbic reward center, which is responsible for the rewarding feelings we experience which follow pleasurable events, was also activated. 

I'd further infer that novel or non-traditional humor would potentially appeal more to men, resulting in similar executive processing effects. The fact that a woman's mesolimbic reward center of the brain responded more favorably to novel stimuli may be due to this area having been more conditionally repressed, naturally responding to historically subservient societal roles. This suppression appears to have weakened the nucleus accumbens, NAcc, which is part of the mesolimbic reward center of the brain associated with processing pleasantly unexpected experiences. 

More than this being a gender study, I believe the diminished cognitive effects of humor on the brain are more associated with neglect in men, women, and children than on gender alone and would yield similar neural results when reactivated. Maintaining a healthy amuse system would yield greater cognitive and physiological benefits for everyone. 

This study also clearly demonstrates that there are positive effects resulting from humor as a physiological and cognitive defense against depression. 

For more information on this study... 

http://med.stanford.edu/news_releases/2005/november/humor.html