Working Scientist3 Maalis 2023

What happens in our brains when we're trying to be funny

After a mostly miserable childhood in the small Israeli village of Tel Aviv (his words), Ori Amir moved to the US, where he gained a PhD in cognitive neuroscience and launched a second career as a stand-up comedian.

Amir is now a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he researches what happens in our neural networks when we are trying to be funny.

His interest in this was triggered after realising there were around 20 studies examining brain activity when we are enjoying comedy, he says, but nothing about the creative process involved in being funny. Amir’s research also investigates attempts to use artificial intelligence to generate humour.

“I’m afraid that if I make any jokes about artificial intelligence, I will get in trouble in the future. Artificial intelligence would cancel me. So I’m refraining from making any such jokes,” he tells his audience.

Amir’s stand-up act also includes anecdotes about life as a PhD student. “It’s going to take seven years, the first five-and-a-half-years to work very hard on developing a silly accent,” he adds. “Then you do some original research and it all culminates in a dissertation defence in which you present your work in front of five important neuroscientists. And if you fail, they eat your brains.”

This is the third episode of Tales from the Synapse, a 12-part podcast series with a focus on brain science, produced in partnership with Nature Neuroscience and introduced by Jean Mary Zarate, a senior editor at the journal.

The series features brain scientists from all over the world who talk about their career journeys, collaborations and the societal impact of their research.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(229)

How jazz boosts my creativity in physics

Theoretical physicist Stephon Alexander was 12 years old when his father bought him a saxophone at a garage sale near their home in the Bronx, New York. Soon after he heard Ornette Coleman, a pioneer ...

29 Touko 20min

Hit a lab project glitch? Thinking about your thesis title like a storyteller can help you focus

Frances Brodsky believes that writing her three mystery novels set in the world of bench science has improved her scientific writing. “I love making up titles for my books and chapters,” she says. “On...

22 Touko 16min

Running a farm, pursuing a research career: what’s the difference?

Brandon Brown “fell into farming” after tiring of city life during the COVID-19 pandemic and now tends more than 150 fruit trees alongside his research into HIV and public health ethics at the Univers...

15 Touko 14min

How a passion for baking fermented a fresh career move

Baking bread during Covid-19 lockdowns provided Chantle Edillor with some career inspiration. “I knew I wanted to do something different and an exploration in sourdough presented an opportunity that I...

8 Touko 16min

How sewing can set you up for failure and success in science

Yasmin Proctor-Kent likens sewing to science. “I find them really hard to separate them in my brain. I don’t think I can sew without engaging the same part of my brain that I do science with,” she say...

30 Huhti 18min

Hit a glitch in your research? Some ‘night science’ thinking could move it forward

The French biologist and Nobel prizewinner François Jacob talked about day and night science as part of the creative process that underpins research. The former, he argued in his 1988 autobiography, i...

23 Huhti 22min

How to thrive in science when you move abroad

Among the barriers faced by researchers who move abroad to develop their careers is a so-called “hidden curriculum,” says Sonali Majumdar, whose book, Thriving as an International Scientist, was publi...

9 Huhti 36min

How procrastination can rob you of career fulfilment in science

Simon May describes his 2025 book Jump! as a new approach to conquering procrastination. Unlike self-help manuals that urge readers to break tasks down into manageable chunks with clear deadlines, May...

1 Huhti 29min