Volume 79, Part A, December 2015, Pages 10–20
The neural basis of humour comprehension and humour appreciation: The roles of the temporoparietal junction and superior frontal gyrus
Highlights
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- Superior frontal gyrus effect is greater to humour appreciation than comprehension.
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- Humour recognition levels correlates with left temporoparietal junction responses.
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- This offers a unique distinction between humour comprehension and appreciation.
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- Research design is sensitive to individual differences in humour comprehension.
Abstract
Psychological
well-being and social acumen benefit from the recognition of humourous
intent and its enjoyment. The enjoyment of humour requires recognition,
but humour recognition is not necessarily accompanied by humour
enjoyment. Humour recognition is crucial during social interactions,
while the associated enjoyment is less critical. Few neuroimaging
studies have explicitly differentiated between the neural foundations of
humour comprehension and humour appreciation. Among such studies,
design limitations have obscured the specification of neural correlates
to humour comprehension or appreciation. We implemented a trichotomous
response option to address these design limitations. Twenty-four
participants rated 120 comics (90 unaltered with humourous intent and 30
caption-altered without humourous intent) as either funny jokes (FJ),
not funny jokes but intended to be funny (NFJ), or not intended to be
funny or non-jokes (NJ). We defined humour comprehension by NFJ minus NJ
and humour appreciation by FJ minus NFJ. We measured localized blood
oxygen level dependent (BOLD) neural responses with a 3T MRI scanner. We
tested for BOLD responses in humour comprehension brain regions of
interest (ROIs), humour appreciation ROIs, and across the whole-brain.
We found significant NFJ–NJ BOLD responses in our humour comprehension
ROIs and significant FJ–NFJ BOLD responses in select humour appreciation
ROIs. One key finding is that comprehension accuracy levels correlated
with humour-comprehension responses in the left temporo-parietal
junction (TPJ). This finding represents a novel and precise neural
linkage to humour comprehension. A second key finding is that the
superior frontal gyrus (SFG) was uniquely associated with
humour-appreciation. The SFG response suggests that complex cognitive
processing underlies humour appreciation and that current models of
humour appreciation be revised. Finally, our research design provides an
operational distinction between humour comprehension and appreciation
and a sensitive measure of individual differences in humour
comprehension accuracy.
Keywords
- Humour comprehension;
- Humour appreciation;
- Inferior frontal gyrus and temporo-parietal junction;
- Substantia nigra and amygdala;
- Dorsomedial superior frontal gyrus
