Neuroscience of sarcasm

We know sarcasm when we hear it. Usually, anyway. Certain kinds of brain injury or dementia can cause us to completely miss when someone is being sarcastic. To understand why, neuropsychologists at the University of California, San Francisco scanned the brains of a variety of people to find where our appreciation for sarcasm lies. From the New York Times:

...The magnetic resonance scans revealed that the part of the brain lost among those who failed to perceive sarcasm was not in the left hemisphere of the brain, which specializes in language and social interactions, but in a part of the right hemisphere previously identified as important only to detecting contextual background changes in visual tests.

“The right parahippocampal gyrus must be involved in detecting more than just visual context — it perceives social context as well,” (lead investigator Dr. Katherine) Rankin said.

The discovery fits with an increasingly nuanced view of the right hemisphere’s role, said Dr. Anjan Chatterjee, an associate professor in the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania.<

“The left hemisphere does language in the narrow sense, understanding of individual words and sentences,” Dr. Chatterjee said. “But it’s now thought that the appreciation of humor and language that is not literal, puns and jokes, requires the right hemisphere.”

Link

[#1 posted by Stu Mark , June 4, 2008 6:19 AM]

Yeah, right, like sarcasm is funny!?! Who cares about this stuff anyway, it's just boring nonsense!!

[#2 posted by Mr. Anthrope , June 4, 2008 6:26 AM]

That article was soooooo interesting!

[#3 posted by RedMonkey , June 4, 2008 6:35 AM]

Teen 1: Oh, here comes that cannonball guy. He's cool.
Teen 2: Are you being sarcastic, dude?
Teen 1: I don't even know anymore.

[#4 posted by MarlboroTestMonkey7 , June 4, 2008 6:51 AM]

My right parahippocampal gyrus made write this comment, sorry. Well, not really.

[#5 posted by d2kd3k , June 4, 2008 8:04 AM]

Mind Hacks tore the NYT to shredsM over bad reporting for this one, actually:

"If you're going to be sarcastic, make sure you do it with the full force of knowledge behind you, because there's nothing that'll make you look more ridiculous than being sarcastic and wrong.

Unfortunately, an otherwise interesting article from The New York Times manages to tick both boxes."

[#6 posted by Duane , June 4, 2008 8:07 AM]

I wish I could remember the name of the comedian who did the "first guy to use sarcasm" bit:

"Wow, this dinner plate is so hot! I can barely touch it!"

"Really?"

"No! It's completely cold!! That's my point!"

"Then why did you say it was hot?"

"I was being.....something."

[#7 posted by jwerner , June 4, 2008 8:52 AM]

Kids in the Hall on Sarcasm:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=MjMYQyhjiYA

[#8 posted by Takuan , June 4, 2008 9:02 AM]

do sarcastic monkeys preserve their genes by feeding the literal monkeys to the leopards?

[#9 posted by ThreeFJeff , June 4, 2008 10:14 AM]

So that old favorite becomes:

"Dude, did you miss a maintenance interval? You might want to get your right parahippocampal gyrus adjusted."

[#10 posted by Bouncy Bouncy , June 4, 2008 10:44 AM]

Lesson: tumour is the lowest form of sarcasm.

[#11 posted by cephalopod , June 4, 2008 3:13 PM]

Does anyone remember who did this bit on Letterman, probably back in the '80s? I want to say it was either Richard Lewis or Paul Reiser.

Comedian: Ask me who invented sarcasm.
Dave: OK, who invented sarcasm?
Comedian [dismissively]: I did.