The Lowest Form of Wit

[mothwing]

The part of your brain which is responsible for your sarcasm detection is probably the left Brodmann's area 47.

"[S]arcasm detection activated the neural circuits involved in mentalizing processes, as well as those of the semantic executive system. This is consistent with the notion that pragmatic processes, such as sarcasm, are closely related to mentalizing functions (Frith and Frith, 2003). We suggest that the left BA 47 might be where mentalizing and language processes interact during sarcasm detection."

"Sarcasm detection activated the left temporal pole, the superior temporal sulcus, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann's area [BA] 47). The left BA 47 was activated more prominently by sarcasm detection than by the first sentence. These findings indicate that the detection of sarcasm recruits the medial prefrontal cortex, which is part of the mentalizing system, as well as the neural substrates involved in reading sentences."

And if you fail to detect sarcasm?

"The difficulties that small children might have in understanding irony are related to their problems with inferring the speaker's beliefs and intentions (Sullivan et al., 1995 and Winner and Leekam, 1991). Understanding irony requires first-order intentionality about the speaker's beliefs (to avoid interpreting irony as a mistake), as well as second-order intentionality about the speaker's beliefs regarding the listener's beliefs (to avoid interpreting irony as a lie; Dews and Winner, 1997). There is also good empirical evidence for a clear association between deficits in mentalizing and pragmatic understanding in individuals with autism. The inability to report thoughts about thoughts (that is, second-order meta-representations) is thought to explain why autistic individuals, especially those with Asperger's syndrome (AS), exhibit communication problems (Adachi et al., 2004, Frith and Happé, 1994, Happé, 1994 and Leekam and Prior, 1994).

The same pattern of impairment has been reported in lesion studies (Dennis et al., 2001). Winner et al., 1998 E. Winner, H. Brownell, F. Happé, A. Blum and D. Pincus, Distinguishing lies from jokes: theory of mind deficits and discourse interpretation in right hemisphere brain-damaged patients, Brain Lang. 62 (1998), pp. 89–106. Abstract | PDF (91 K) Winner et al. (1998) have suggested that individuals with right hemisphere damage are unable to distinguish lies from jokes and that this inability is related to a difficulty in attributing second-order mental states (Winner et al., 1998). Prefrontal brain damage was shown to be associated with both impaired empathic ability and impaired ability to interpret ironic utterances (Shamay et al., 2002 and Shamay-Tsoory et al., 2005)."

Ok. Back to topic. Ahem.