Humor Modulates the Mesolimbic Reward Centers

Mobbs, Dean; Greicius, Michael D.; Azim, Eiman; Menon, Vinod; Reiss, Allan L.

doi:10.1016/s0896-6273(03)00751-7

Cited by 353 publications

(337 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…This finding is in contrast to research on certain other personality traits, in particular to findings on "extraversion" and "neuroticism", which both showed robust correlations with BOLD response in limbic brain areas such as the amygdalae [5]. Activation in limbic brain areas was detected in most imagingstudies on humor appreciation as well [14,17,22,24,43].…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 96%

“…Notably, some of the regions found to be activated in these studies on personality traits were also found to be activated in brain imaging studies on humor appreciation. A number of studies have investigated the neural correlates of humor appreciation with functional magnetic resonance [3,13,14,22,24,25,35,39,43] and PET [17] (see [41] and [43] for an overview). The regions shown to be activated during humor appreciation in these studies included both cortical regions (such as the left inferior frontal gyrus [25,43], medial frontal [13], anterior [13,14,43] and posterior temporal [13,14,35] gyri) as well as subcortical nuclei (such as the caudate [14] and nucleus accumbens [17]) and limbic structures (such as the hippocampus [14] or amygdalae [24]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Trait cheerfulness modulates BOLD response in lateral cortical but not limbic brain areas—A pilot fMRI study

Rapp

Wild

Erb

et al. 2008

Neuroscience Letters

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Having a good "sense of humor" is an important personality characteristic that significantly influences social communication and may represent an important coping strategy. To take things "with humor" does not only represent a state characteristic but also a personality trait that can reliably be assessed with questionnaires like the "state-trait-cheerfulness-inventory" (STCI) by Ruch [Ruch et al., Assessing the "humorous temperament": construction of the facet and standard trait forms of the statetrait-cheerfulness-inventory-STCI, Humor 9 (1996) 303-339]. Substantial inter-individual differences among study subjects are a key feature of almost all functional magnetic resonance imaging studies on higher cognitive functions. Usually, they are considered as "statistical noise" and are not recommended for the data analysis, although they can have a high intra-individual stability. However, a number of recent fMRI studies found robust correlations between inter-individual differences in BOLD response and personality traits such as extraversion. The aim of this pilot exploratory study was to localise regions where the BOLD response was predicted by "humor personality" scores. 10 healthy male subjects viewed funny or non-funny versions of Gary Larson cartoons while BOLD response was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Data were collected from the whole brain (28 slices, slice thickness 4 mm, 1 mm gap, TR = 3 s). SPM 99 software was used. A simple regression analysis with the sub-score cheerfulness from the STCI was applied. Higher cheerfulness in the STCI predicted brain activation in the right inferior parietal lobule (Tal X, Y, Z: 45, −77, 29), but not in limbic and prefrontal brain areas. We conclude that neural correlates of cheerfulness are correlated with BOLD response in lateral cortical rather than limbic brain areas. Likely the activated region is important for a readiness or tendency to be amused, whereas the regions previously shown to be activated in humor appreciation studies are related to the understanding of the joke and the emotional reaction. Having a good "sense of humor" is an important personality characteristic that significantly influences social communication and may represent an important coping strategy. To take things "with humor" does not only represent a state characteristic but also a personality trait that can reliably be assessed with questionaires like the "state-trait-cheerfulness-inventory" (STCI-T) by Ruch (Ruch et. al., Humor 9 (1996) 303-339).Substantial inter-individual differences among study subjects are a key feature of almost all functional magnetic resonance imaging studies on higher cognitive functions. Usually, they are considered as "statistical noise" and are not recommended for the data analysis, although they can have a high intra-individual stability. However, a number of recent fMRI studies found robust correlations between inter-individual differences in BOLD-response and personality traits such as extraversion.The aim of this ...

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 96%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trait cheerfulness modulates BOLD response in lateral cortical but not limbic brain areas—A pilot fMRI study

Rapp

Wild

Erb

et al. 2008

Neuroscience Letters

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“…Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have sought to circumscribe areas that are involved in humor processing and its appreciation using jokes, cartoons or funny movies (e.g., Azim, Mobbs, Jo, Menon, & Reiss, 2005;Bartolo, Benuzzi, Nocetti, Baraldi, & Nichelli, 2006;Goel & Dolan, 2001;Mobbs, Greicius, Abdel-Azim, Menon, & Reiss, 2003;Mobbs, Hagan, Azim, Menon, & Reiss, 2005;Moran, Wig, Adams, Janata, & Kelley, 2004;Sieboerger, Ferstl, Volkmann, & von Cramon, 2004;Watson, Matthews, & Allman, 2006;Wild et al, 2006). A wide area around the temporo-parietal junction (temporo-occipital junction, posterior superior temporal sulcus, posterior middle temporal gyrus, in the following called TPJ), temporal pole and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) is assumed to be involved in cognitive humor processing (e.g., Goel & Dolan, 2001;Mobbs et al, 2003;Moran et al, 2004;Wild et al, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A wide area around the temporo-parietal junction (temporo-occipital junction, posterior superior temporal sulcus, posterior middle temporal gyrus, in the following called TPJ), temporal pole and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) is assumed to be involved in cognitive humor processing (e.g., Goel & Dolan, 2001;Mobbs et al, 2003;Moran et al, 2004;Wild et al, 2006). Most of the fMRI studies that have investigated neurologically healthy subjects found a more left-sided network.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive humor processing: Different logical mechanisms in nonverbal cartoons—an fMRI study

Samson¹,

Zysset²,

Huber³

2008

Social Neuroscience

126

121

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Although recent fMRI studies on humor have begun to elucidate cognitive and affective neural correlates, they weren't able to distinguish between different logical mechanisms or steps of humor processing, i.e., the detection of an incongruity and its resolution. This fMRI study aimed to focus in more detail on cognitive humor processing. In order to investigate pure incongruity resolution without preprocessing steps, nonverbal cartoons differing in their logical mechanisms were contrasted with nonhumorous pictures containing an irresolvable incongruity. The logical mechanisms were: (1) visual puns (visual resemblance, PUNs); (2) semantic cartoons (pure semantic relationships, SEMs); and (3) Theory of Mind cartoons (which require additionally mentalizing abilities, TOMs). Thirty cartoons from each condition were presented to 17 healthy subjects while acquiring fMR images. The results reveal a left-sided network involved in pure incongruity resolution: e.g., temporo-parietal junction, inferior frontal gyrus and ventromedian prefrontal cortex. These areas are also involved in processing of SEMs, whereas PUNs show more activation in the extrastriate cortex and TOMs show more activation in socalled mentalizing areas. Processing of pictures containing an irresolvable incongruity evokes activation in the rostral cingulate zone, which might reflect error processing. We conclude that cognitive processing of different logical mechanisms depends on separate neural networks.

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“…Imaging the neural substrates of humour Using fMRI, Allan Reiss and his colleagues at Stanford University measured the brain response in sixteen volunteers who were exposed to humorous cartoons in the scanner [2]. In an event-related design, the subjects categorized the cartoons as 'Funny' or 'Not Funny', and these categories were subsequently used with each subject to determine which brain regions were relatively activated by humour.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Something funny happened to reward

Berns

2004

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

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Humor Modulates the Mesolimbic Reward Centers

Cited by 353 publications

References 54 publications

Trait cheerfulness modulates BOLD response in lateral cortical but not limbic brain areas—A pilot fMRI study

Trait cheerfulness modulates BOLD response in lateral cortical but not limbic brain areas—A pilot fMRI study

Cognitive humor processing: Different logical mechanisms in nonverbal cartoons—an fMRI study

Something funny happened to reward

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