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.

Comments

but seriously folks...

[dick johnson]

Far be it from me to not take a cheap shot at this story...

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

Re:I believe it.

[Seehund]

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."