To print: Select File and then Print from your browser's menu --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: DG DISPATCH - RSNA: Researchers Localize Brain's Humor Center URL: http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/1EC9AA.htm Doctor's Guide November 30, 2000
By W. A. Thomasson, PhD Special to DG News
CHICAGO, IL -- November 30, 2000 -- The funny bone is not just in the elbow, but it is also not in just a single part of the brain, according to results presented this week at the Radiologic Society of North America annual meeting.
Identification of the regions involved in humor may help neurosurgeons to avoid these regions during surgery-- some of which were once believed to have little or no function -- or to anticipate the resulting deficits if they cannot avoid them. It will also allow neurologists to correlate clinical symptoms with lesions in these regions.
The research was presented at the RSA by Dean K. Shibata, MD, of the University of Rochester Medical Center, in Rochester, New York.
Dr. Shibata originally began by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the brain's processing of verbal incongruities. But when he tried to exaggerate the incongruity by using such sentences as, "The plane landed on the hippopotamus" he found that he was instead studying how the brain handles humor.
Further study involving verbal jokes, cartoons and canned laughter tracks -- with subjects being asked either to internally join in the laughter or to refrain -- identified at least three specific regions involved in different aspects of humor.
Appreciation of jokes and cartoons seems to be related primarily to the ventromedial frontal lobe, an area that shows relatively little activity in patients with major depression and in which lesions may destroy the person's sense of humor.
Laughter seems to be associated primarily with the supplemental motor cortex, an observation supported by a recent report of the results of electrically stimulating this area during brain surgery. The right premotor cortex may also be involved.
Finally, the pleasant emotional feeling that accompanies mirth appears to be associated with the nucleus accumbens, as are many other positive emotional states.
Dr. Shibata pointed out that psychiatry has often tended to focus on the negative emotions but needs to study the positive ones as well. It is even possible, he speculated, that in the future psychiatrists may be using fMRI to assess these emotions in individual patients. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 1999 P\S\L Consulting Group Inc. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of P\S\L content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of P\S\L. P\S\L shall not be liable for any errors, omissions or delays in this content or any other content on its sites, newsletters or other publications, nor for any decisions or actions taken in reliance on such content. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This news story was printed from *Doctor's Guide to the Internet* located at http://www.docguide.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Return to News Story Page This site is maintained by webmaster@pslgroup.com Please contact us with any comments, problems or bugs. All contents Copyright (c) 1998 P\S\L Consulting Group Inc. All rights reserved.