Funny brain modules

The ability to comprehend sarcasm depends upon a carefully orchestrated sequence of complex cognitive skills based in specific parts of the brain. Yeah, right, and I'm the Tooth Fairy. But it's true: New research details an "anatomy of sarcasm" that explains how the mind puts sharp-tongued words into context. The findings appear in the May issue of Neuropsychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA).

The Israeli psychologists who conducted the research explain that for sarcasm to score, listeners must grasp the speaker's intentions in the context of the situation. This calls for sophisticated social thinking and "theory of mind," or whether we understand that everyone thinks different thoughts. As an example of what happens when "theory of mind" is limited or missing, autistic children have problems interpreting irony, the more general category of social communication into which sarcasm falls.

In sum, Shamay-Tsoory and his/her colleagues propose a neural network for processing sarcastic utterances:

1-The left hemisphere language cortices interpret the literal meaning of the utterance;

2-The frontal lobes and right hemisphere process the intentional, social and emotional context, identifying the contradiction between the literal meaning and the social/emotional context;

3-The right ventromedial prefrontal cortex integrates the literal meaning with the social/emotional knowledge of the situation and previous situations, helping the listener determine the true meaning.

Well, that explains why we put the sarcasm into the Thinkerer site. This particular model may not hold up, but I am confident about the analysis of processing requirements.

And what a contrast with Freud! Here we find a conflict in the head. But the outcome is not misery but a laugh. Of course, this is a resolved conflict. Maybe that makes a difference.