Here’s a quick quiz, which we offer free for teachers who like to stimulate thought. Use it to do that very thing with your students.
THE QUIZ QUESTION: Read the following explanation from a November 7, 2005 press release issued by Stanford University. How many different alternative explanations can you devise in sixty (60) seconds? Here is the "official" explanation:
GENDER DIFFERENCES ARE A LAUGHING MATTER, STANFORD BRAIN STUDY SHOWS
… After analyzing the data, the researchers found that men and women share
much of the same humor-response system; both use to a
similar degree the part of the brain responsible for semantic knowledge
and juxtaposition and the part involved in language processing. But they
also found that some brain regions were activated more in women. These
included the left prefrontal cortex, suggesting a greater emphasis on
language and executive processing in women, and the nucleus accumbens,
or NAcc, which is part of the mesolimbic reward center….