Humor and emotion: Quantitative meta analyses of functional neuroimaging studies.

Humor is a ubiquitous aspect of human behavior that is infrequently the focus of neuroscience research. To localize human brain structures associated with the experience of humor, we conducted quantitative activation likelihood estimate (ALE) meta analyses of 57 fMRI studies (n = 1248) reporting enhanced regional brain activity evoked by humorous cues versus matched control cues. We performed separate ALE analyses of studies that employed picture-driven, text-based, and auditory laughter cues to evoke humor. A primary finding was that complex humor activates supramodal areas of the brain strongly associated with emotional processes, including bilateral amygdala and inferior frontal gyrus. Moreover, activation in brain regions associated with language, semantic knowledge, and theory of mind were differentially modulated by text and picture-driven humor cues, while hearing laughter enhances activation in auditory association cortex. The identification of humor-driven brain networks has the potential to expand brain-derived models of human emotion and could provide useful targets in translational research and therapy.

• Publication year

  2021

• Venue

  Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior

• Publication date

  2021-01-06

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.cortex.2021.02.023PMID 33836303
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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