Your right prefrontal cortex is working SO well today!

A quick way to annoy a professor is to miss a class, come back the next day and ask this teacher, "Did I miss anything important?" Out of anger or to be funny your professor might smile and answer sarcastically, "Oh, NOOOOOO...we NEVER do anything IMPORTANT in here. All we did was waste our time so you didn't miss ANYTHING important."  If you understand that this is sarcasm you will a) understand that you did miss something important and b) your professor is probably annoyed with you.

On the other hand, if you don't understand that this is sarcasm you would believe that you did not miss anything important and also not catch that your professor is irritated by your question. This latter situation is frustrating for everyone involved and it is also the topic of today's memes:

Sarcasm is a form of irony that requires some sophisticated cognitive processes to understand it. Most children do not understand sarcasm until their pre-teen years (and then it is SO fun for the parents when their kids say sarcastic things to them) and people with autism struggle with this throughout their lives. We also see that people with Alzheimer's Disease and individuals with certain types of brain damage may not catch when something is said sarcastically.

Shamay-Tsoory, Tomer, and Aharon-Peretz (2005) conducted a neuroscience study to pinpoint locations in the brain that are associated with the understanding of sarcasm. They compared 17 healthy people to 41 people who had brain lesions in very specific areas. The lesions were mostly the result of head injuries but a few were due to tumors or stroke, but none of the affected individuals had problems with speech or "general intellectual functioning" (reasoning ability and verbal fluency).

All participants were tested on their abilities to identify emotions communicated by vocal tone and facial expression, to recognize mistakes in social situations (faux pas), and to interpret sarcasm. Reading people's emotions from their tones and facial expressions is a necessary part of understanding sarcastic statements in which those things conflict with the literal meaning of what is said. Recognizing when a person has committed a faux pas is considered to be a good test of Theory of Mind. Theory of Mind is the ability to understand what another person is thinking - a skill that is required to decode sarcasm. 

The sarcasm task consisted of four stories that were always told in two ways: one that depicted a sarcastic remark and one that depicted a literal remark. For example (Shamay-Tsoory et al., 2005, p. 300):

             Joe came to work, and instead of beginning to work, he sat down to rest. His boss 

             noticed his behavior and said, "Joe, don't work, too hard!"

            Joe came to work and immediately began to work. His boss noticed his behavior and

            said, "Joe, don't work, too hard!"

The participants listened to the stories and after each version they were asked comprehension questions ["Did Joe work hard (p. 300)?"] and questions to assess sarcasm understanding ["Did the manager believe that Joe worked hard (p. 300)?"].

Shamay-Tsoory et al. reported small but statistically significant results: specifically, the participants who had the worst problem understanding sarcasm tended to have lesions in their right side prefrontal cortices. This was especially true for participants whose lesions went into the ventromedial portions of this area. Participants whose lesions were located in the posterior part of their brains did not have problems understanding sarcasm: they scored the same as the healthy individuals.

The authors state that these findings make sense in relation to the functions of these locations. The entire prefrontal cortex is associated with understanding language pragmatics or the social aspects of language. The right prefrontal cortex in particular helps us to: decode the parts of language related to feelings; to understand the parts of language that are not literal; to recognize faux pas; and to "get it" when somebody is being funny. The ventromedial area adds to our experience of empathy: being able to feel the emotions of other people. These cognitive skills are necessary to understand that a speaker is saying one thing but trying to communicate another - often angry or humorous - message.

This relationship was further reinforced because the participants with right prefrontal lesions also struggled with Theory of Mind (problems recognizing faux pas) and emotion identification (problems matching tone and facial expression to particular feelings). In past research these two skills were required to understand sarcasm.

So the next time an adult (who does not have autism or brain damage) does not understand your sarcasm...

instead of getting annoyed you can smile and simply remark, "Your right prefrontal cortex is working SO well today."

Further Reading:

You can access a pdf of the Shamay-Tsoory et al. (2005) article here thanks to the American Psychological Association.

A blogpost from the Gottman Institute: sarcasm might be fun when you are joking and having a good time, but if you are sarcastic when arguing with your partner this may predict the end of your relationship.

National Geographic Channel's "Brain Games" offers an online, interactive experience of the brain and language.