The Biology of Fun and the Fun of Biology

Biology is known for is being rather unpredictable; people often tell us we are a bit 'quirky', and they generally mean this as a compliment. This likely relates to the 'pleasure of novelty': it is a common experience that when something, even a great work of art, is experienced too often within a short period of time, the pleasure evoked strongly diminishes. The idea of 'fun' in work does not necessarily imply frivolity, or triviality — fun can be had in work that results in a Nobel Prize (theoretical physicists, such as Richard Feynman, seem particularly prone to this), as well as that rewarded with an Ig Nobel Prize. And interestingly, the latter has evolved into a worthy prize: a paper we published in 2013 [2] was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize, and as one of the authors of that paper, Marie Dacke, explained in her Q & A last year [3], the prize is now awarded for " research that first makes people laugh and then makes them think " , which has to be a wholly good thing. That a scientific paper could evoke laughter brings to mind the relationship between 'fun' and 'funny'. Clearly they are very closely connected, but they are also distinct — you can obviously have fun without laughter, and, while humour is generally fun, one can 'get' a joke without a feeling of fun. I think it is interesting that both of these contrasts can depend on 'mood'… if you are in a happy, carefree mood, then the kind of physical fun that is not commonly associated with humour can make you laugh; and conversely, if you are in a bad, distracted mood, you can understand why a joke is funny but fail to laugh (at least, to laugh spontaneously). And of course having fun, in turn, promotes a good mood and has longer-term benefits for our well-being. This relationship between fun and mood is suggestive of an underlying biology [4], which is what I shall turn to now. It would seem that 'fun' is our subjective experience of a certain kind of mental stimulation, which can be a product of an intellectual activity, such as visiting an art gallery or editing Current Biology, or perhaps more obviously through a physical activity, such as visiting a theme park or paddling at the seaside. The active pursuit of such stimulation may be one way …