Med humor som v ben – sproglig humor som bindeled mellem kognition og emotion

The attempt to establish a coherence between the cognitive description of language and thought and the neurobiological description of the human brain is often limited by lacking knowledge concerning the interplay between cognition and emotion – both necessary elements in understanding the way the brain works. Verbal humor is a convenient research object in this regard, as it consists (primarily) in cognitive mechanisms, eliciting an emotional response – laughter. In this article, a review of the history of humor research is compared to a selection of studies (lesion-studies, ERP and fMRI) on the relationship between humor, language and the brain, as an attempt to show how a broadly based theory of humor can help us to understand the relationship between cognition and emotion.