My students and I are about to begin collecting data for our study in the brain and humor. The basic research question is this: is there a site in the brain necessary for "getting" a joke? We already know that several brain areas become active when comprehending a written joke, especially in the left hemisphere. And we know that different areas become active when comprehending a cartoon, especially in the right hemisphere. We are less sure about brain activity from hearing a joke, but we would anticipate considerable left hemisphere involvement because of its dominance in language processing. [I will extend this later.]
Our initial approach to this question is to study stroke survivors and compare their performance with an age-matched, neurologically intact control group. For the control group we are testing faculty and staff from the university. (We can verify their age fairly easily, but beyond that we will just take it for granted.) Our stroke survivors are wonderful people who desire to participate in research just in case it helps. Our approach will be to test several stroke survivors. They will tend to have brain lesions due to their stroke in various brain sites. Then by grouping stroke survivors by lesion site (e.g., left frontal lobe, right frontal lobe, left pariatel lobe, and so on) we can compare their performance on our jokes. [I will tell you more about the jokes later.]
Jay Sheth, Andrea Nuckolls, and I (and other students who have since graduated and moved away from the university) spent several hours recording our jokes (and non-joke controls) this summer and early fall. We plan to present the jokes (and controls) over headphones. After a joke is presented, the participant will rate it for funniness and then answer a comprehension question about it. While this occurs, we will also video tape the participants facial expressions for signs of "mirth."
We will have much data to analyze.
