Sarcasm and the Brain: Look at the Right Prefrontal Cortex

From The APA Monitor:

It's no joke: Study identifies brain circuitry involved in our grasp of sarcasm
The APA Monitor
May 2005
Print version: page 13

A study in May's Neuropsychology (Vol. 19, No. 2) finds the right prefrontal cortex--a brain region associated with social cognition and identifying emotions--helps us understand sarcasm.

Authors Simone Shamay-Tsoory, PhD, and Rachel Tomer, PhD, of the University of Haifa, and Judith Aharon-Peretz, PhD, of Israel's Rambam Medical Center, hypothesized that the right frontal cortex regulates understanding sarcasm since the right hemisphere concerns emotional processing and the prefrontal cortex deals with social cognition.

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