Getting the Joke: Insight during Humor Comprehension – Evidence from an fMRI Study
Autor: | Fang Tian, Yuling Hou, Wenfeng Zhu, Arne Dietrich, Qinglin Zhang, Wenjing Yang, Qunlin Chen, Jiangzhou Sun, Qiu Jiang, Guikang Cao |
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Rok vydání: | 2017 |
Předmět: |
genetic structures
Joke Middle temporal gyrus lcsh:BF1-990 Inferior frontal gyrus language-free cartoon 050105 experimental psychology Developmental psychology 03 medical and health sciences Superior temporal gyrus 0302 clinical medicine insight medicine Psychology 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences General Psychology Original Research medicine.diagnostic_test 05 social sciences functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) Cognition eye diseases character humor comprehension Comprehension lcsh:Psychology incongruity-resolution theory Superior frontal gyrus Functional magnetic resonance imaging 030217 neurology & neurosurgery Cognitive psychology |
Zdroj: | Frontiers in Psychology, Vol 8 (2017) Frontiers in Psychology |
ISSN: | 1664-1078 |
Popis: | As a high-level cognitive activity, humour comprehension requires incongruity detection and incongruity resolution, which then elicits an insight moment. The purpose of the study was to explore the neural basis of humour comprehension, particularly the moment of insight, by using both characters and language-free cartoons in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study. The results showed that insight involving jokes elicited greater activation in language and semantic-related brain regions as well as a variety of additional regions, such as the superior frontal gyrus (SFG), the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), the middle temporal gyrus (MTG), the superior temporal gyrus (STG), the temporoparietal junctions (TPJ), the hippocampus and visual areas. These findings indicate that the MTG might play a role in incongruity detection, while the SFG, IFG and the TPJ might be involved in incongruity detection. The passive insight event elicited by jokes appears to be mediated by a limited number of brain areas. Our study showed that the brain regions associated with humour comprehension were not affected by the type of stimuli and that humour and insight shared common brain areas. These results indicate that one experiences a feeling of insight during humour comprehension, which contributes to the understanding of humour comprehension. Key words:insight, humour comprehension, incongruity-resolution theory, character, language-free cartoon, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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