English comedian Sir Norman Wisdom once joked that three things happen as you get older: First, you lose your memory; then, well, Sir Norman couldn’t remember the other two. All jokes aside, a new study shows that getting older should be a laughing matter. A small study conducted by researchers at Loma Linda University in California suggests that laughter can improve short-term memory in older adults. Elderly test subjects who watched a 20-minute funny video performed better on all measures of a memory test immediately following the experiment and had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which is known to negatively impact neurons in the brain. Researchers say their findings could be applied to rehabilitative and wellness programs for the elderly.
To test the link between humor and memory, researchers gathered a group of 20 healthy individuals who were between 66 and 72 years old. One group, the humor ...
