Researchers Pinpoint Brain's Sarcasm Sensor 472
LibertarianWackJob writes "Researchers have found the section of the human brain that is responsible for understanding sarcasm.
" I'm sure the comments on this story will be incredibly insightful.
Error (Score:4, Funny)
Hyuk hyuk. (Score:5, Funny)
You brain is obviously not equipped to be funny. You should take this stuff to the ametuer stand-up circuit; you'll have less time to post on Slashdot.
Wow. I feel like I just exercised my brain! Who knew being so vicious was so healthy? I'm not being a jerk; I'm exercising! Thanks, researchers!
Re:Hyuk hyuk. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hyuk hyuk. (Score:3, Funny)
*redirects sarcasm at self*
Problems (Score:5, Funny)
Not really, this one will be modded as funny. Oh wait.. you were being sarcastic.
Re:Problems (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Problems (Score:5, Funny)
"Are you being sarcastic, dude?"
"I don't even know anymore."
Re:Problems (Score:2)
Re:Problems (Score:2, Informative)
You might not have seen it, but earlier today a script was copying comments from stories and posting them in the wrong story. I saw one story that had comments from three other stories in it. It confused the hell out of me. At first I thought people were replying to someone's sig, so I turned them back on and checked. Then I thought maybe there was a bug in the code that was causing it. Overall, it was rather annoying, but kind of funny. I'd give the
Re:Problems (Score:5, Funny)
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
From Fix's High-Yield Neuroanatomy: "Destruction of the anterior two-thirds of the frontal lobe convexity results in deficits in concentration, orientation, abstracting ability, judgment, and problem-solving ability. Other frontal lobe deficits include loss of initiative, inappropriate behavior, release of sucking and grasping reflexes, gait apraxia, sphincteric incontinence . . . and inappropriate social behavior (e.g., use of obscene language, urinating in public)"
I volunteered in a psych ward during undergrad, and people with prefrontal cortex lesions are among the most difficult patients to interact with on a daily basis.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Funny)
Much better quote... (Score:3, Funny)
Frink: (With sarcasm detector) Are you kidding? This baby is off the charts mm-hai.
CBG: A sarcasm detector, that's a _real_ useful invention.
(Sarcasm detector explodes)
http://www.snpp.com/guides/cbg.file.html#6 [snpp.com]
American researchers (Score:5, Funny)
Man, I'm on *fire* today!
Re:American researchers (Score:5, Funny)
"Yes, put JUNIOR up there, he'd be a GREAT president!"
"Hey, what the country will vote for is a Massachusetts democrat, Dukakis did great after all!".
The problem is that such comments are taken literally by the bodies responsible for choosing candidates. I think perhaps our political parties are brain damaged, but then I'm being redundant.
non-American Culture (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:non-American Culture (Score:2)
valid point, nonetheless. but i'm pretty sure neuroscientists/psychologists try to create controlled conditions in their experiments, and therefore wouldn't mix American and Chinese subjects in such a study.
Re:non-American Culture (Score:5, Funny)
Probably just told you that just so you didn't commit a cultural faux-pas.
Oh, hmm, this topic is on sarcasm, so anything I write will automatically be interpreted backwards But wait, that means that your post meant that actually the Chinese got sarcasm just fine, which means I don't need to post this....
Oh hell, I'm submitting it anyway.
Re:non-American Culture (Score:3, Funny)
If you're spending your time trying to understand what someone is saying you sometimes don't also catch the queue that he's being sarcastic. Similarly, at least speaking chinese, you have to be careful with how you change your inflections. "Our" sarcasm, which usually relies on e
Re:American researchers (Score:2)
Re:American researchers (Score:5, Funny)
...and that would be tragic, now wouldn't it.
Yeah right.. (Score:5, Funny)
He cannot be serious.
Yeah, (Score:2, Funny)
Of course (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Of course (Score:2)
Of course a study with around 25 brain damaged people watching movies is a perfect reason to make phrenological claims.
Do I detect a hint of sarcasm in that voice? *smiles*
Re:Of course (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Of course (Score:3, Interesting)
A personal query for any neuroscientists reading: The article uses "prefrontal area" and "prefrontal lobe", and a portion of the article paraphras
Researchers Pinpoint Brain's Sarcasm Sensor (Score:2, Funny)
obg Simpsons quote (Score:5, Funny)
obligatory Kids in the Hall sketch (Score:5, Funny)
DEREK: Great party, huh? I actually don't know anyone at the party, actually, I'm kinda new to the neighborhood, actually, but my friend Chris said "come to the party, I'll introduce you around, you'll know everybody by the time you leave the party." Chris knows everybody, and soon I'll know everybody! 'Course, Chris didn't show up. So I guess I gotta mingle. So here I am mingling! 'Course, mingling really isn't my game, I'm not really a mingler, per se, I was actually in the corner alone mingling - that means I'm not talking to anyone, actually. I saw you over here, I said "there's a guy by himself, why not go over here, I'll mingle with this guy, this guy looks like a mingler," so hi, I'm Derek, pleased to meet you.
SARCASTIC GUY: Well it certainly is a pleasure to meet YOU, Derek.
DEREK: ...I'm sorry if I bothered you.
SARCASTIC GUY: Oh no, you're not bothering me, Derek, far from it. There's nothing I would rather do than just stand here and chat with you! Y'know - really get to know you?
DEREK: Look, I don't think there's any need to be sarcastic.
SARCASTIC GUY: Oh, I'm not being sarcastic! NOOOO! This is just a little speech impediment. I can't help it!
DEREK: Okay, I've obviously said or done something wrong to upset you, I'm just gonna apologize and be on my way.
SARCASTIC GUY: No, no, no, please stay. It's true. I've talked this way all my life. It's made things very difficult for me.
DEREK: Yeah! Right!
SARCASTIC GUY: Hey! Where ya goin'? Come back! I really wanna be your friend. I'm so lonely.
and ... (Score:3, Funny)
Slashdot is awesome! (Score:2, Funny)
+1 (Score:4, Funny)
Re:+1 (Score:3, Funny)
This is... (Score:3, Funny)
Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
In fact, once all the sarcastically deficient have been identified, we will need to lobby to get the sarcastic brain chunk added to the list of donor organs so that everyone can have the opportunity to lead a normal sarcastic life. Be an organ donor, only you can give the gift of sarcasm.
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Insightful)
I didn't know... (Score:2)
sarcasm (Score:2)
Sarchasm (Score:5, Funny)
Lesions, that's it! (Score:2)
So everone who wants to read Slashdot should get checked out with an MRI. Lesions automatically disqualify membership. Although AC posts will be grandfathered.
Full text in case of Slashdot effect (Score:3, Informative)
Researchers Pinpoint Brain's Sarcasm Sensor
By Randy Dotinga
HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, May 23 (HealthDay News) -- Oh yeah, right!
No, it's true -- many of you don't go a day without dishing out several doses of sarcasm. But some brain-damaged people can't comprehend sarcasm, and Israeli researchers think it's because a specific brain region has gone dark.
The region, according to the researchers, handles the task of detecting hidden meaning, a crucial component of sarcasm. If that part of the brain is out of commission, the irony doesn't come through, the scientists report in the May issue of Neuropsychology.
"People with prefrontal brain damage suffer from difficulties in understanding other people's mental states, and they lack empathy," said study co-author Simone Shamay-Tsoory, a researcher at the University of Haifa. "Therefore, they can't understand what the speaker really is talking about, and get only the literal meaning."
The findings, Shamay-Tsoory said, could help rehabilitation centers do a better job of helping brain-damaged patients adjust to the world and understand other people.
In their study, Shamay-Tsoory and her colleagues first enrolled 58 subjects -- 25 participants with prefrontal-lobe damage, 17 who were healthy and 16 who had damage to the posterior lobe of the brain.
Then they tested each person by exposing them to several "neutral" and sarcastic comments recorded by actors as part of a story. This "sarcasm meter" was designed to gauge how well the subjects could comprehend the unique kind of irony that is sarcasm.
For example, actors read phrases such as "don't work too hard" in both a neutral sense (meaning "you're a hard worker") and a sarcastic sense (meaning "you're a real slacker"). Each comment came in proper context as part of a story about, say, a worker who's sleeping or a worker who's grinding away at his job.
All the subjects understood the sarcasm except for those with damage to the prefrontal area, which is above the eye sockets and behind the forehead. And among those, people with damage to a specific area known as the ventromedial area had the most trouble deciphering sarcasm.
The researchers think lesions in several parts of the brain can contribute to an inability to understand sarcasm. But, they wrote, this particular area is important because it draws on your innate recognition of the emotions of other people -- empathy -- and past experiences to comprehend a speaker's intentions.
Brian Knutson, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Stanford University, said the findings make sense because the brain's cortex handles a variety of sophisticated tasks, and sarcasm could be on the list.
The findings also reflect a growing interest in how emotion is processed by the brain. "Emotion has not been a popular topic in science for a long time," because it's difficult to measure, he said, but things are changing.
Re:Full text in case of Slashdot effect (Score:2)
Man, can we have smarmy sarcasm mode every day?
Re:Full text in case of Slashdot effect (Score:2)
Re:Full text in case of Slashdot effect (Score:2)
This goes hand-in-hand with... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This goes hand-in-hand with... (Score:2)
Seriously, though, have you ever made a sarcastic comment to a gullible person? Good times. Good times.
Re:This goes hand-in-hand with... (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you ever posted on Slashdot, and been moderated OFFTOPIC?
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Lyndsey Nagle: Do I detect a note of sarcasm?
Frink: (With sarcasm detector) Are you kidding? This baby is off
the charts mm-hai.
CBG: A sarcasm detector, that's a real useful invention.
(Sarcasm detector explodes)
Asperger's as well? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wouldn't this also be applicable to people with Asperger's Syndrome? If this research is correct then sarcasm must be especially difficult for Aspergerians (is that even a word?)
Note to self: When Bram Cohen asks how you are doing, do not reply "I so great you should kill me now so I can die happy."
Re:Asperger's as well? (Score:5, Informative)
So yes, I'd say the research might very well apply to Asperger's in some way or another.
Sarcasm (Score:2)
Does my ventromedial area detect a bit of sarcasm there? No really, tell me. I can't tell.
THE LIGHT! (Score:2)
w00t! I SEE THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL! So much has been explained to my fragile little mind...
Also in the news... (Score:3, Funny)
Being anatomically associated with what is loosely referred to in scientific circles as "The Grunt Lobe", the recently identified cortical area believed to allow males to translate short gutteral sounds into complex syntactical commentary, these are potential examples of male neurological development.
May resolve questions about Betelgeusian anatomy (Score:2, Interesting)
Thank God I had that lobotomy... (Score:2)
Unfortunately (Score:2)
Re:Unfortunately (Score:2)
Re:Unfortunately (Score:2)
Wow! (Score:2)
Kids in the Hall (Score:3, Funny)
Kevin: Look, I don't think there's any need to be sarcastic.
Dave: Oh, I'm not being sarcastic! Nooo! This is just a little speech impediment. I can't help it.
Not yet, I guess... (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one who finds it amusing that so far, not a single comment has been moderated "Insightful"?
Re:Not yet, I guess... (Score:2)
Re:Not yet, I guess... (Score:5, Funny)
Score: 5, Insightful
Oh, THAT'S a good moderation.
Re:Not yet, I guess... (Score:5, Funny)
Post is modded insightful which makes it funny which makes it no longer insightful which makes it considerably less funny...
*eyes cross*
Norman, Co-ordinate (Score:5, Funny)
of course not (Score:2)
But they won't be redundant, because you know nobody will try to make the same stupid joke twice.
This is the First Step Towards Curing Sarchasm (Score:2)
Sarchasm - The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the recipient who doesn't get it.
Finally, a cure in sight...
cultural gap (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:cultural gap (Score:4, Insightful)
You're all insensitive clods! (Score:2)
-
Yeah. (Score:2)
Insightful (Score:2)
Re:Insightful (Score:2, Interesting)
They drop the sarcasm into the conversation with just a delicate touch, so smooth that that it may slip past the other who for a split seconds toys in his mind as to whether that is a genuine emotion, then it clicks.
Anyone from the UK, who watches 'Have I Got News For You' will know that show to be a sarcasm frenzy, and Paul Merton is one of the most vicious paranas in the water.
A real genius of the art
May prove to be useful... (Score:2, Insightful)
It seems to me that today's computer is no different then someone who isn't able to understand the hidden meaning, but takes everything literally. If be learn of how exactly the human brain takes in the information and goes that extra step to figure out what was mea
Better Article (Score:2, Informative)
What part misidentifies irony? (Score:2)
What to Name It? (Score:5, Funny)
The brain area in question should be called the medulla obnoxiosa. In honor of me.
Stop the Madness! (Score:2, Informative)
Yet another reason why (Score:2, Funny)
not that shocking (Score:2)
damage to the prefrontal lobe can even cause sociopathy [oupjournals.org], to give an extreme example.
Very Intriguing (Score:2)
I think it would be cool if the WC3 could develop a sarcasm tag. (I think it would be tons more useful than the blink tag). This would help us create a way to translate our sarcasm.
I propose that it looks like italics except that it slants the other way (to
It's stories like this... (Score:2)
But this article is a little behind. Not only have scientists found the part of the brain responsible for understanding sarcasm, but they've also found the part of the brain that makes some people believe that every trait is localized to a part of the brain. Not surprisingly, it's just centimeters away from the part of the brain researchers believe makes certain people think that every human trait is l
Oblig Simp (Score:2)
-Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]
Sarcasm Meter, and next up (Score:2)
Oh, great. (Score:2)
but seriously folks... (Score:5, Informative)
But this research does serve a useful purpose in Autism/asperger syndrome.
Folks with asperger syndrome commonly have an inability to detect sarcasm and read facial, social cues.
>>By definition, those with AS have a normal IQ and many individuals (although not all), exhibit exceptional skill or talent in a specific area. Because of their high degree of functionality and their naiveté, those with AS are often viewed as eccentric or odd and can easily become victims of teasing and bullying. While language development seems, on the surface, normal, individuals with AS often have deficits in pragmatics and prosody. Vocabularies may be extraordinarily rich and some children sound like "little professors." However, persons with AS can be extremely literal and have difficulty using language in a social context. Read full definition here [udel.edu]
Re:but seriously folks... (Score:3, Funny)
Aspberger (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the problems the afflicted have is that they don't understand the sarcams of a sentence such as when the teacher asks "did the dog eat your homework". This was a literal example from that article.
So, I wonder what this discovery will mean for people with autism and Aspbergers?
failed sarcasm = speaker's fault, not listener (Score:5, Interesting)
1 - Hmmm - that statement seemed like a really dumb thing to say, in direct contradiction of reality.
2 - I wonder why this person would say something so at odds with the truth?
3 - It could be because he literally believes it and is just dumb or delusional, or it could be because he knows better and is trying to make a joke.
4 - If I respect the speaker's intelligence, then I realize it's not serious, and thus a joke.
5 - If I do not respect the speaker's intelligence, then I still think he seriously meant the dumb thing he said.
So the problem is that if I fail to see sarcasm, it's because I don't have reason to respect the speaker's intelligence.
This is why sarcasm doesn't work online, by the way - the speaker is a stranger to you and so you don't know he's smart enough not to believe something dumb, and so step 4 up above doesn't trigger.
Sarcasm trips up Google's ad-server (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a look at the Huh? Corp [huhcorp.com] site, and notice the counterpoint between the devilishly satirical site content and the dead-serious Google ads.
One cannot underestimate the serious menace posed to contextual ad networks by the unregulated use of sarcasm by ad-network partner sites.
As soon as I finish typing up this comment I plan to file for a provisional patent on "An Automated Method of Determining Sarcasm Content by Using a Naive Baysian Classifier Trained on Slashdot Comments."
redundancy detection (Score:3, Insightful)
sarcasm in other languages (Score:3, Informative)
Re:sarcasm in other languages (Score:3, Insightful)
I suspect most people are also less likely to use sarcasm with someone they'r
Re:Insightful? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A sacrasm detector? (Score:2)
Re:I believe it. (Score:5, Funny)
I keep telling the people who don't get my sarcasm that they're obviously brain damaged, but they don't get that, either.
Which, perhaps, explains all those posts that get modded "Off topic".
Re:I believe it. (Score:5, Funny)
We call them mods
Re:I believe it. (Score:5, Informative)
"But some brain-damaged people can't comprehend sarcasm, and Israeli researchers think it's because a specific brain region has gone dark. [...]
"People with prefrontal brain damage suffer from difficulties in understanding other people's mental states, and they lack empathy," said study co-author Simone Shamay-Tsoory, a researcher at the University of Haifa. "
DUH!
We've known this at least since Phineas Gage [deakin.edu.au]'s unfortunate accident with a tamping iron in 1848.
Given that we're talking about work by Shamay-Tsoory, a quick PubMed search says that the identified area is probably somewhere in the right ventromedial prefrontal lobe. That it can be identified by testing e.g. comprehension of sarcasm naturally gets twisted by Forbes/Slashduh, so now it looks like we've got a special Sarcasm Organ.
"Breaking news: Them science guys find out that our breathing is handled by large saccular organs in the thoracic cavity. They're calling 'em "lungs" in medical mumbo-jumbo."