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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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My brain is obviously not equipped to handle this story.
I'm sure the comments on this story will be incredibly insightful.
Not really, this one will be modded as funny. Oh wait.. you were being sarcastic.
What a really useful discovery.
Report being unable to confirm the discovery of the region in American subjects.
Man, I'm on *fire* today!
Deleted
I'm sure the comments on this story will be incredibly insightful.
He cannot be serious.
Of course a study with around 25 brain damaged people watching movies is a perfect reason to make phrenological claims.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
"ooohh, a sarcasm detector. That's REALLY useful" - Comic Book Guy
And I'm sure that editorial comments on this article will be informative.
Laboratree - Scientific collaboration based on OpenSocial.
For those WITHOUT damage to the prefrontal area , it really is! *grin*
To my respect level for CmdrTaco. Quite the funny comment.
...definately stuff that matters. :-|
-Tom
Maybe he meant the comments would be incredibly inciteful?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
In fact, once all the sarcastically deficient have been identified, we will need to lobby to get the sarcastic brain chunk added to the list of donor organs so that everyone can have the opportunity to lead a normal sarcastic life. Be an organ donor, only you can give the gift of sarcasm.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
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
Scientists also located the area of the brain responsibile for gullibility, and they now have a procedure to remove that section of your brain.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
CBG: Oh yeah, everyone's real happy then.
Lyndsey Nagle: Do I detect a note of sarcasm?
Frink: (With sarcasm detector) Are you kidding? This baby is off
the charts mm-hai.
CBG: A sarcasm detector, that's a real useful invention.
(Sarcasm detector explodes)
char *mySig;
Wouldn't this also be applicable to people with Asperger's Syndrome? If this research is correct then sarcasm must be especially difficult for Aspergerians (is that even a word?)
Note to self: When Bram Cohen asks how you are doing, do not reply "I so great you should kill me now so I can die happy."
Do not taunt Happy-Fun Ball
And quickly following today's findings, it has now been verified that the Sarcasm Cortex has only been detected in male subjects so far. It is not yet clear if female subjects possess this neural hardware, though most researchers don't hold out a great deal of hope on the matter.
Being anatomically associated with what is loosely referred to in scientific circles as "The Grunt Lobe", the recently identified cortical area believed to allow males to translate short gutteral sounds into complex syntactical commentary, these are potential examples of male neurological development.
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
But some brain-damaged people can't comprehend sarcasm...
I keep telling the people who don't get my sarcasm that they're obviously brain damaged, but they don't get that, either.
Which, perhaps, explains all those posts that get modded "Off topic".
Dave: Oh no, you're not bothering me, Derek, far from it. There's nothing I would rather do than just stand here and chat with you. You know, really get to know you?
Kevin: Look, I don't think there's any need to be sarcastic.
Dave: Oh, I'm not being sarcastic! Nooo! This is just a little speech impediment. I can't help it.
Am I the only one who finds it amusing that so far, not a single comment has been moderated "Insightful"?
Laughter is the best medicine, but in certain situations the Heimlich maneuver may be more appropriate.
Well, seriously though.. what of different cultures besides American Culture? When I went to China we were told not to use sarcasm to the people we interacted with. It was not a part of their culture and sense of humor to be sarcastic, and therefore they would not understand our sarcasm at all.
023AD01("Child", "Evil");
i wonder how they account for sarcasam missed from cultural differences. a friend of mine did some time in africa with the peace corps, and remembers all of the american humor based on sarcasam just deadpanning; maybe this sector is only developed through cultural trends?
"My heart is in the work." - Andrew Carnegie
While I did enjoy about 20 different versions of what the comic book guy says, I'd like to point out that if we understand how human brain interprets the meaning could have some significant impacts on the way humans communicate with computers.
It seems to me that today's computer is no different then someone who isn't able to understand the hidden meaning, but takes everything literally. If be learn of how exactly the human brain takes in the information and goes that extra step to figure out what was meant as opposed to what was said, it will go a long way towards completely transforming how humans interact with computers. You look at all the Star Trek series and you don't see people telling the computer how to do something, you see people telling the computer what to do. Something that we so far haven't achieved (to that scale at the very least), but it may be worth striving for.
Just my two cents...
My brain is obviously not equipped to handle this story.
You brain is obviously not equipped to be funny. You should take this stuff to the ametuer stand-up circuit; you'll have less time to post on Slashdot.
Wow. I feel like I just exercised my brain! Who knew being so vicious was so healthy? I'm not being a jerk; I'm exercising! Thanks, researchers!
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.
But some brain-damaged people can't comprehend sarcasm...
We call them mods
The brain area in question should be called the medulla obnoxiosa. In honor of me.
When all you have is an axe, everything looks like a grindstone.
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'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Some of the best sarcasm is that which occurs between advanced practitioners of the art.
They drop the sarcasm into the conversation with just a delicate touch, so smooth that that it may slip past the other who for a split seconds toys in his mind as to whether that is a genuine emotion, then it clicks.
Anyone from the UK, who watches 'Have I Got News For You' will know that show to be a sarcasm frenzy, and Paul Merton is one of the most vicious paranas in the water.
A real genius of the art
--Imagine every Thursday shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers.
DEREK: Great party, huh? I actually don't know anyone at the party, actually, I'm kinda new to the neighborhood, actually, but my friend Chris said "come to the party, I'll introduce you around, you'll know everybody by the time you leave the party." Chris knows everybody, and soon I'll know everybody! 'Course, Chris didn't show up. So I guess I gotta mingle. So here I am mingling! 'Course, mingling really isn't my game, I'm not really a mingler, per se, I was actually in the corner alone mingling - that means I'm not talking to anyone, actually. I saw you over here, I said "there's a guy by himself, why not go over here, I'll mingle with this guy, this guy looks like a mingler," so hi, I'm Derek, pleased to meet you.
SARCASTIC GUY: Well it certainly is a pleasure to meet YOU, Derek.
DEREK: ...I'm sorry if I bothered you.
SARCASTIC GUY: Oh no, you're not bothering me, Derek, far from it. There's nothing I would rather do than just stand here and chat with you! Y'know - really get to know you?
DEREK: Look, I don't think there's any need to be sarcastic.
SARCASTIC GUY: Oh, I'm not being sarcastic! NOOOO! This is just a little speech impediment. I can't help it!
DEREK: Okay, I've obviously said or done something wrong to upset you, I'm just gonna apologize and be on my way.
SARCASTIC GUY: No, no, no, please stay. It's true. I've talked this way all my life. It's made things very difficult for me.
DEREK: Yeah! Right!
SARCASTIC GUY: Hey! Where ya goin'? Come back! I really wanna be your friend. I'm so lonely.
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
There was an interview with Bram Cohen a little while back. It talked a lot about Aspbergers syndrome which is similar to autism.
One of the problems the afflicted have is that they don't understand the sarcams of a sentence such as when the teacher asks "did the dog eat your homework". This was a literal example from that article.
So, I wonder what this discovery will mean for people with autism and Aspbergers?
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
And my wife was always saying I was missing a part of my brain!!
In your FACE honey!!
Eschew Obfuscation
researchers have located a crucial difference between men and women. It has to do with the size of one particular area of the brain...
-Tim Louden
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
Understanding sarcasm is pretty interesting actually. I know people who have Phds but can not detect sarcasm at all. One of these guys is a lecturer of mine, obviously very bright in an academic way but anything vaguely sarcastic goes straight over his head. Interestingly, he also barely has a sense of humour either. I wonder what if anything makes the sarcasm part of the brain develop more or less. Would be very interesting to find out.
Also, people with asperger's syndrome have a similar problem with taking the literal meaning of things. Human brains are very strange and complicated indeed
I say when sarcasm fails to be detected as such, it's usually the speaker's fault. Why? Becuase the thought process going through the listener's head in an instant is something like this:
1 - Hmmm - that statement seemed like a really dumb thing to say, in direct contradiction of reality.
2 - I wonder why this person would say something so at odds with the truth?
3 - It could be because he literally believes it and is just dumb or delusional, or it could be because he knows better and is trying to make a joke.
4 - If I respect the speaker's intelligence, then I realize it's not serious, and thus a joke.
5 - If I do not respect the speaker's intelligence, then I still think he seriously meant the dumb thing he said.
So the problem is that if I fail to see sarcasm, it's because I don't have reason to respect the speaker's intelligence.
This is why sarcasm doesn't work online, by the way - the speaker is a stranger to you and so you don't know he's smart enough not to believe something dumb, and so step 4 up above doesn't trigger.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Here's a nut even the collective mind of Google has been unable to crack: Machine recognition of sarcasm.
Take a look at the Huh? Corp site, and notice the counterpoint between the devilishly satirical site content and the dead-serious Google ads.
One cannot underestimate the serious menace posed to contextual ad networks by the unregulated use of sarcasm by ad-network partner sites.
As soon as I finish typing up this comment I plan to file for a provisional patent on "An Automated Method of Determining Sarcasm Content by Using a Naive Baysian Classifier Trained on Slashdot Comments."
What we need now is scientists to figure out why it is that so many /. posters post exactly the same thing... and they all get modded up to +5 funny. Although it is really funny to read "A scarcasm detector! Now that's REAL useful!" twenty-three times.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
I was a pretty sarcastic kid until I read that line in "A Separate Peace." It really made me stop and realize that while sarcasm is great for an occasional bit of humor, but it's a sad excuse for saying something worthwhile.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
If everything you say is insightful and you are saying you are insightful, then you are funny, but if everything you say is insightful, then you are being funny, but insightful... help help, Norman, Co-ordinate!!!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
So, were you one of the subjects?
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?
Lyndsey Nagle: Do I detect a note of sarcasm?
Frink: (With sarcasm detector) Are you kidding? This baby is off the charts mm-hai.
CBG: A sarcasm detector, that's a _real_ useful invention.
(Sarcasm detector explodes)
http://www.snpp.com/guides/cbg.file.html#6
I suggest we institute a sarcasm recognition protocol for the sarcasm-challenged amongst us. During non-elctronic communication this could be a sharp slap in the face. To avoid confusion in situations where a slap in the face would have been natural anyway, we insist that in such situations, the slap be followed by a kick in the bollocks. To avoid confusion in situations where a kick in the bollocks, preceeded by a slap in the face would have been natural, anyway, we suggest that this specific procedure be avoided, except in communications with a sarcasm-challenged person. During electronic communications, if the speaker suspects a sarcasm-challenged listener, he can either verbally shout, "SLAP, BALL-KICK" followed by his sarcastic communication, followed by "FINISH SLAP AND FINISH BALL-KICK", or in written messages substitue a written version. To avoid situations where it would have been natural to write/shout the above in a non-sarcastic context, we suggest that communications which require the use of these words in a non-sarcastic context be avoided. In the unlikely event that any females read slashdot, and find this protocol sexist, all occurrences of "bollocks" above can be replaced by "groin". Likewise, "ball-kick" can be replaced with "groin-kick".