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Researchers Pinpoint Brain's Sarcasm Sensor
LibertarianWackJob writes "Researchers have found the section of the human brain that is responsible for understanding sarcasm.
" I'm sure the comments on this story will be incredibly insightful.
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Not really, this one will be modded as funny. Oh wait.. you were being sarcastic.
Oh wow, that was the funniest comment I have ever read on Slashdot!
Researchers Pinpoint Brain's Sarcasm Sensor
By Randy Dotinga
HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, May 23 (HealthDay News) -- Oh yeah, right!
No, it's true -- many of you don't go a day without dishing out several doses of sarcasm. But some brain-damaged people can't comprehend sarcasm, and Israeli researchers think it's because a specific brain region has gone dark.
The region, according to the researchers, handles the task of detecting hidden meaning, a crucial component of sarcasm. If that part of the brain is out of commission, the irony doesn't come through, the scientists report in the May issue of Neuropsychology.
"People with prefrontal brain damage suffer from difficulties in understanding other people's mental states, and they lack empathy," said study co-author Simone Shamay-Tsoory, a researcher at the University of Haifa. "Therefore, they can't understand what the speaker really is talking about, and get only the literal meaning."
The findings, Shamay-Tsoory said, could help rehabilitation centers do a better job of helping brain-damaged patients adjust to the world and understand other people.
In their study, Shamay-Tsoory and her colleagues first enrolled 58 subjects -- 25 participants with prefrontal-lobe damage, 17 who were healthy and 16 who had damage to the posterior lobe of the brain.
Then they tested each person by exposing them to several "neutral" and sarcastic comments recorded by actors as part of a story. This "sarcasm meter" was designed to gauge how well the subjects could comprehend the unique kind of irony that is sarcasm.
For example, actors read phrases such as "don't work too hard" in both a neutral sense (meaning "you're a hard worker") and a sarcastic sense (meaning "you're a real slacker"). Each comment came in proper context as part of a story about, say, a worker who's sleeping or a worker who's grinding away at his job.
All the subjects understood the sarcasm except for those with damage to the prefrontal area, which is above the eye sockets and behind the forehead. And among those, people with damage to a specific area known as the ventromedial area had the most trouble deciphering sarcasm.
The researchers think lesions in several parts of the brain can contribute to an inability to understand sarcasm. But, they wrote, this particular area is important because it draws on your innate recognition of the emotions of other people -- empathy -- and past experiences to comprehend a speaker's intentions.
Brian Knutson, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Stanford University, said the findings make sense because the brain's cortex handles a variety of sophisticated tasks, and sarcasm could be on the list.
The findings also reflect a growing interest in how emotion is processed by the brain. "Emotion has not been a popular topic in science for a long time," because it's difficult to measure, he said, but things are changing.
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
A family member has been diagnosed with mild autism (Asperger's is a specific diagnosis within the broad spectrum of autism) and I can say that this member of my family completely misses any sarcastic comment that hasn't been specifically pointed out as being non-literal in an earlier conversation.
So yes, I'd say the research might very well apply to Asperger's in some way or another.
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
I was reading this article on the BBC website when it hit slashdot... would have posted it sooner but apparently I don't pass the turing test.
OK, I'm going to rain on the sarcasm parade. Just to point out that damage to ventromedial prefrontal cortex is not just about sarcasm (thank you very much). Damage to this area is known to impair a wide range of things like decision making skills and social abilities. It's NOT like the authors are claiming this is the one place that sarcasm lives in the brain, or that this is all that bit of brain does. We now return you to your regularly scheduled /. banter.
I think it started today. I know it wasn't on last night.
You might not have seen it, but earlier today a script was copying comments from stories and posting them in the wrong story. I saw one story that had comments from three other stories in it. It confused the hell out of me. At first I thought people were replying to someone's sig, so I turned them back on and checked. Then I thought maybe there was a bug in the code that was causing it. Overall, it was rather annoying, but kind of funny. I'd give the idiot that did a point for being creative.
But this research does serve a useful purpose in Autism/asperger syndrome.
Folks with asperger syndrome commonly have an inability to detect sarcasm and read facial, social cues.
>>By definition, those with AS have a normal IQ and many individuals (although not all), exhibit exceptional skill or talent in a specific area. Because of their high degree of functionality and their naiveté, those with AS are often viewed as eccentric or odd and can easily become victims of teasing and bullying. While language development seems, on the surface, normal, individuals with AS often have deficits in pragmatics and prosody. Vocabularies may be extraordinarily rich and some children sound like "little professors." However, persons with AS can be extremely literal and have difficulty using language in a social context. Read full definition here
- dj
You can trust mainstream media such as Forbes (and Slashduh) to be brain-damaged as well.
"But some brain-damaged people can't comprehend sarcasm, and Israeli researchers think it's because a specific brain region has gone dark. [...]
"People with prefrontal brain damage suffer from difficulties in understanding other people's mental states, and they lack empathy," said study co-author Simone Shamay-Tsoory, a researcher at the University of Haifa. "
DUH!
We've known this at least since Phineas Gage's unfortunate accident with a tamping iron in 1848.
Given that we're talking about work by Shamay-Tsoory, a quick PubMed search says that the identified area is probably somewhere in the right ventromedial prefrontal lobe. That it can be identified by testing e.g. comprehension of sarcasm naturally gets twisted by Forbes/Slashduh, so now it looks like we've got a special Sarcasm Organ.
"Breaking news: Them science guys find out that our breathing is handled by large saccular organs in the thoracic cavity. They're calling 'em "lungs" in medical mumbo-jumbo."
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
I thought it was Indian workers (or just any workers from "diverse cultural backgrounds")?
7 2
http://www.thiederman.com/articles_detail.php?id=
Minimize jokes and sarcasm around people of diverse cultural backgrounds.
Lightness in a relationship is one thing, a joke which is apt to be misunderstood is another. Most humor is specific to the culture that it comes from. Jokes told, for example, by the Japanese are apt to be nonsensical to an American even if he or she does speak the language. Although humor is a universal human trait, the specifics of what makes things funny vary from culture to culture. Because of this, jokes, and sarcasm in particular, might be taken literally or can offend someone who does not "get" the joke.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Actually, parent's post is pretty insightful -- if you encounter a person with a prefrontal cortex lesion , the *last* thing you'll notice about their condition is their inability to understand sarcasm.
From Fix's High-Yield Neuroanatomy: "Destruction of the anterior two-thirds of the frontal lobe convexity results in deficits in concentration, orientation, abstracting ability, judgment, and problem-solving ability. Other frontal lobe deficits include loss of initiative, inappropriate behavior, release of sucking and grasping reflexes, gait apraxia, sphincteric incontinence . . . and inappropriate social behavior (e.g., use of obscene language, urinating in public)"
I volunteered in a psych ward during undergrad, and people with prefrontal cortex lesions are among the most difficult patients to interact with on a daily basis.
Sarcasm is more than just a function in the brain - some languages use it very little, if at all. The Japanese, for instance, almost NEVER use sarcasm. I have a friend who taught English there that tried to teach his students sarcasm - and it really failed because some of the students just didn't understand it.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?