Dude. Ya Gotta Score Me Some Porky Pig

Cartoons act like cocaine

A search for the mind's "funny bone" has shed new light on the mysteries of merriment, revealing that the reason humour is addictive is that it activates "reward centres" in the brain.

Sophisticated brain imaging techniques were used to look at activity in specific brain regions when Dr Allan Reiss of Stanford University and colleagues presented people with cartoons considered funny or unfunny.

Amusing 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.