If you tell a woman a joke and get a blank look, don't immediately despair.

   She's just taking her time to understand it.

   But if the punchline does eventually make her laugh it will be worth the wait.

   Scientists have found that while women are slower than men at getting jokes, they enjoy them more when the penny does drop.

   Research shows that women use their brain more than men to process quips and have less expectation that they will be funny.

   When a joke does hit the right note, however, they derive more pleasure from it.

   Scientists asked ten men and ten women to look at dozens of black and white cartoons and rate them on a 'funniness scale'.

   During the process they underwent sophisticated scans that mapped which parts of their brain were lighting up and timed how long it took them to respond to a joke.

   Although the scans were largely similar, the women tended to use certain parts of their brain more than the men. These included the pre-frontal cortex, which helps us decode language and screen out irrelevancies.

   Researcher Professor Allan Reiss said: "Our findings fit the stereotype of how men and women react to humour. We found greater activity in the pre-frontal cortex in women, indicating women are processing stimuli that involve language areas of the brain.

   "The interpretation of that finding is that women tend to respond more to narrative and wordplay than slapstick."

   Analysis of a 'feelgood' brain region called the nucleus accumbens also revealed that men and women have different attitudes to humour. Professor Reiss, of Stanford University in California, said: "Women appeared to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punchline of the cartoon. So when they got the joke's punchline, they were more pleased about it."

   The funnier the cartoon, the more the women's nucleus accumbens lit up. This was not the case for men, who seemed to expect the cartoons to be funny from the start.

   The women took slightly longer than the men to react to jokes that were funny - but were quicker to spot duds.

   如果你給一位女士講了個笑話，但得到的只是一個茫然的眼神，可別失望得太早。

   她只是需要時間來領會。

   但如果你所說的笑話最終能博她一笑，那么還是值得一等的。

   科研人員發現，盡管女性領會笑話比男性慢半拍，但一旦她們"恍然大悟",會比男性更享受其中的樂趣。

   研究表明，女性在理解幽默時的用腦程度高于男性，同時她們對笑料的預期低于男性。

   但一旦她們發現笑話的妙處所在，則能從中得到更多的樂趣。

   研究人員讓十名男性和十名女性看幾十張黑白卡通畫，并讓他們對這些畫進行"趣味評級".

   在此過程中，研究人員對受測者進行了精確的腦部掃描，以繪制出他們大腦的哪些部位被"點亮",并對他們對一個笑話做出反應的時間進行了測定。

   盡管掃描結果十分類似，但女性使用大腦特定部位的程度超過男性，其中包括幫助人們分析語言、篩除無關信息的大腦前額葉皮層。

   研究人員艾倫？賴斯教授說："我們的發現與男女對幽默的反應模式相吻合。我們發現，在處理幽默信息時女性的前額葉皮層更加活躍，這表明女性在處理刺激信息時使用了大腦的語言功能區。

   "女性對故事和文字游戲的反應比滑稽劇更強烈可以用來解釋這一發現。

   對被稱為"快樂感覺區"的大腦伏隔核的分析還表明，男性和女性對于幽默的態度不同。加州斯坦福大學的賴斯教授說："女性對于回報的期待似乎更低，這在試驗中相當于卡通畫的笑點。所以當女性一旦領會了其中的妙處，她們會更享受其中的樂趣。"

   卡通畫面越搞笑，女性大腦伏隔核被點亮的部分越多。但男性的情況卻不同，他們似乎從最開始就對卡通畫的趣味性抱有很大期待。

   女性對有趣的笑話的反應時間比男性略長，但卻能更快識破冷笑話。
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