If you tell a woman a joke and get a blank look, don't immediately despair.

She's just taking her time to understand it.

But if the punchline¹ does eventually make her laugh it will be worth the wait.

Scientists have found that while women are slower than men at getting jokes, they enjoy them more when the penny does drop.

Research shows that women use their brain more than men to process quips and have less expectation that they will be funny.

When a joke does hit the right note, however, they derive² more pleasure from it.

Scientists asked ten men and ten women to look at dozens of black and white cartoons and rate them on a 'funniness scale'.

During the process they underwent sophisticated scans that mapped which parts of their brain were lighting³ up and timed how long it took them to respond to a joke.

Although the scans were largely similar, the women tended to use certain parts of their brain more than the men. These included the pre-frontal cortex, which helps us decode⁴ language and screen out irrelevancies.

Researcher Professor Allan Reiss said: "Our findings fit the stereotype⁵ of how men and women react to humour. We found greater activity in the pre-frontal cortex in women, indicating women are processing stimuli⁶ that involve language areas of the brain.

"The interpretation⁷ of that finding is that women tend to respond more to narrative⁸ and wordplay than slapstick."

Analysis of a 'feelgood' brain region called the nucleus⁹ accumbens also revealed that men and women have different attitudes to humour. Professor Reiss, of Stanford University in California, said: "Women appeared to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punchline of the cartoon. So when they got the joke's punchline, they were more pleased about it."

The funnier the cartoon, the more the women's nucleus accumbens lit up. This was not the case for men, who seemed to expect the cartoons to be funny from the start.

The women took slightly longer than the men to react to jokes that were funny - but were quicker to spot duds.

如果你给一位女士讲了个笑话，但得到的只是一个茫然的眼神，可别失望得太早。

她只是需要时间来领会。

但如果你所说的笑话最终能博她一笑，那么还是值得一等的。

科研人员发现，尽管女性领会笑话比男性慢半拍，但一旦她们“恍然大悟”，会比男性更享受其中的乐趣。

研究表明，女性在理解幽默时的用脑程度高于男性，同时她们对笑料的预期低于男性。

但一旦她们发现笑话的妙处所在，则能从中得到更多的乐趣。

研究人员让十名男性和十名女性看几十张黑白卡通画，并让他们对这些画进行“趣味评级”。

在此过程中，研究人员对受测者进行了精确的脑部扫描，以绘制出他们大脑的哪些部位被“点亮”，并对他们对一个笑话做出反应的时间进行了测定。

尽管扫描结果十分类似，但女性使用大脑特定部位的程度超过男性，其中包括帮助人们分析语言、筛除无关信息的大脑前额叶皮层。

研究人员艾伦•赖斯教授说：“我们的发现与男女对幽默的反应模式相吻合。我们发现，在处理幽默信息时女性的前额叶皮层更加活跃，这表明女性在处理刺激信息时使用了大脑的语言功能区。

“女性对故事和文字游戏的反应比滑稽剧更强烈可以用来解释这一发现。

对被称为“快乐感觉区”的大脑伏隔核的分析还表明，男性和女性对于幽默的态度不同。加州斯坦福大学的赖斯教授说：“女性对于回报的期待似乎更低，这在试验中相当于卡通画的笑点。所以当女性一旦领会了其中的妙处，她们会更享受其中的乐趣。”

卡通画面越搞笑，女性大脑伏隔核被点亮的部分越多。但男性的情况却不同，他们似乎从最开始就对卡通画的趣味性抱有很大期待。

女性对有趣的笑话的反应时间比男性略长，但却能更快识破冷笑话。