Prefrontal Characteropathy and Irony/Sarcasm

[nf3]

http://www.apa.org/releases/sarcasm.html
WASHINGTON — The ability to comprehend sarcasm depends upon a carefully orchestrated sequence of complex cognitive skills based in specific parts of the brain. Yeah, right, and I’m the Tooth Fairy. But it’s true: New research details an “anatomy of sarcasm” that explains how the mind puts sharp-tongued words into context. The findings appear in the May issue of Neuropsychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA).

The Israeli psychologists who conducted the research explain that for sarcasm to score, listeners must grasp the speaker’s intentions in the context of the situation. This calls for sophisticated social thinking and “theory of mind,” or whether we understand that everyone thinks different thoughts. As an example of what happens when “theory of mind” is limited or missing, autistic children have problems interpreting irony, the more general category of social communication into which sarcasm falls.

Simone Shamay-Tsoory, PhD, and colleagues at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa and the University of Haifa, studied 25 participants with prefrontal-lobe damage, 16 participants with posterior-lobe damage and 17 healthy controls. All participants listened to brief recorded stories, some sarcastic, some neutral, that had been taped by actors reading in a corresponding manner. Here is an example of sarcasm: “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.” Meaning: “You’re a real slacker!” Here is a neutral example: “Joe came to work and immediately began to work. His boss noticed his behavior and said, “Joe, don’t work too hard!” Meaning: “You’re a hard worker!”

Following each story, researchers asked a factual question to check story comprehension and an attitude question to check comprehension of the speaker’s true meaning: Did the manager believe Joe was working hard? When participants answered got the fact right but the attitude wrong, they got an “error” score in identifying sarcasm.

Participants with prefrontal damage were impaired in comprehending sarcasm, whereas the people in the other two groups had no such problem. Within the prefrontal group, people with damage in the right ventromedial area had the most profound problems in comprehending sarcasm. The ventromedial area is the inferior (rear) part of the prefrontal cortex, and includes the cortex on top of the orbits of both eyes and the inside part of the frontal lobes.

The findings fit what we already know about brain anatomy. The prefrontal cortex is involved in pragmatic language processes and complex social cognition, thus it followed that participants with prefrontal damage had faulty “sarcasm meters.” At the same time, damage to the ventromedial area, which is involved in personality and social behavior, will disrupt not only understanding sarcasm but also understanding social cues, empathic response and emotion recognition. The authors write, “Understanding sarcasm requires both the ability to understand the speaker’s belief about the listener’s belief and the ability to identify emotions.”

The findings highlight the importance of lesion size in sub-regions of the frontal lobe because the extent of the right ventromedial lesion was significantly related to performance in the sarcasm task: The worse the damage, the greater the impairment.

In sum, Shamay-Tsoory and his/her colleagues propose a neural network for processing sarcastic utterances:

1. The left hemisphere language cortices interpret the literal meaning of the utterance;
2. The frontal lobes and right hemisphere process the intentional, social and emotional context, identifying the contradiction between the literal meaning and the social/emotional context;
3. The right ventromedial prefrontal cortex integrates the literal meaning with the social/emotional knowledge of the situation and previous situations, helping the listener determine the true meaning.

Shamay-Tsoory says, “A lesion in each region in the network can impair sarcasm, because if someone has a problem understanding a social situation, he or she may fail to understand the literal language. Thus this study contributes to our understanding of the relation between language and social cognition.”

The full research article is available here: http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/neu193288.pdf

 

[Craig]

The prefrontal cortex is involved in pragmatic language processes and complex social cognition, thus it followed that participants with prefrontal damage had faulty “sarcasm meters.” At the same time, damage to the ventromedial area, which is involved in personality and social behavior, will disrupt not only understanding sarcasm but also understanding social cues, empathic response and emotion recognition. The authors write, “Understanding sarcasm requires both the ability to understand the speaker’s belief about the listener’s belief and the ability to identify emotions.”

Came across this article a while ago while trying to answer why my father just couldn't understand sarcasm, and whether it had anything to do with his brain damage as a child. By all accounts, it was around the pre-frontal lobes, and he was in a coma for weeks. When he regained consciousness (I always think, but didn't regain much "conscience") he had lost all previous memory of his life, and become a much more aggressive and anti-social person.

As for his "empathic response", I can say it's literally non-existent.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Here's what Lobaczewski has to say about them:

Brain cortex damage in these areas selectively impairs the above mentioned
function without impairing memory, associative capacity, or, in particular, such
instinct-based feelings and functions as, for instance, the ability to intuit a psycho-
logical situation. The general intelligence of an individual is thus not greatly re-
duced. Children with such a defect are almost normal students; difficulties emerge
suddenly in upper grades and affect principally these parts of the curriculum which
place burden on the above function. . . . Persons with an innate talent for intuiting
psychological situations tend to take advantage of this gift in an egotistical and
ruthless fashion. . . . Such individuals interpret their talent for intuit-
ing situations and making split-second oversimplified decisions as a sign of their
superiority compared to normal people, who need to think for long time, experi-
encing self-doubt and conflicting motivations. The fate of such creatures does not
deserve to be pondered long.

In the above he says that they still have the ability to intuit a psychological situation, however these recent findings seem to contradict this, unless my understanding of "intuiting a psychological situation" is faulty. I interpret it as a "theory of mind", or from wiki: "in recent years, the phrase "theory of mind" has more commonly been used to refer to a specific cognitive capacity: the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own."

More from wiki:

Theory of mind appears to be an innate potential ability in humans (and, some argue, in certain other species), but one requiring social and other experience over many years to bring successfully to adult fruition. It is probably a continuum, in the sense that different people may develop more, or less, effective theories of mind, varying from very complete and accurate ones, through to minimally functional. It is often implied or assumed (but not stated explicitly) that this does not merely signify conceptual understanding "other people have minds and think," but also some kind of understanding and working model that these thoughts and states and emotions are real and genuine for these people and not just ungrounded names for parroted concepts. Empathy is a related concept, meaning experientially recognizing and understanding the states of mind, including beliefs, desires and particularly emotions of others without injecting your own, often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes."

Lobaczewski says psychopaths lack this ability entirely while asthenics have a limited capacity for it. He says:

These people [asthenic psychopaths], asthenic and hypersensitive, do not indicate the same glaring
deficit in moral feeling and ability to sense a psychological situation as do essential psychopaths.

Also:

It is precisely this phylogenetically developed basis for our experience, and its
emotional dynamism, that allow individuals to develop their feelings and social
bonds, enabling us to intuit other people’s psychological state and individual or
social psychological reality. It is thus possible to perceive and understand human
customs and moral values.

But psychopaths, lacking such emotional content, cannot learn why certain behaviors are "wrong" in a social context. They cannot comprehend that others have a "mind." They are like walking dummies that talk and scream and show strange reactions to situations.

However, psychopaths are the best at APPEARING to have such an ability. They learn what to say and how to appear in various situations, but without any comprehension of why normal people act in such ways.

So how does this apply to frontal characteropathy? Perhaps, like asthenic psychopathy, frontal characteropaths have SOME ability to intuit a psychological situation, but certain functions are damaged. Perhaps the emotional content is cut off from the intellectual content.

Thoughts?

 

[nf3]

In the above he says that they still have the ability to intuit a psychological situation, however these recent findings seem to contradict this

Well, we do have a puzzle on our hands since Lobaczewski was, quite understandably, vague in many technical areas due to working from memory. Keep in mind thought that he said instinct-based ability to intuit a psychological situation. I just came across another paper that says the amygdala actually plays a major role in identifying facial expressions. So it seems someone with damage to Brodmann Area 10 and even deeper into the ventromedial PFC could still easily identify cognitive and emotional facial expressions and 'intuit' what is going on with the other person in a purely mechanical way.

Damage to BA10 inhibits to varying degrees the ability to compare and contrast decision making data in working memory which leads to the development of a short-cut method. That much agrees with Lobaczewski's description. This research paper on sarcasm is only concerned with investigating damage to the vmPFC in general. More confusion arises here because some researchers seem to include BA10 in this region while others do not. But if you look at the images in the paper you can clearly see damage to BA10 in most of the prefrontal test subjects.

Consider this from the results section:

VM lesions have been shown to disrupt social and emotional behavior. Common sequelae of orbitofrontal damage include lack of affect and social irresponsibility (Bechara, Tranel, Damasio, & Damasio, 1996). There are also complex deficits in reasoning, judgment, and creativity (Benton, 1968; Eslinger & Damasio, 1985; Mesulam, 1985). Recent neuropsychological studies by Damasio and colleagues found that patients with lesions of the VM manifest impairments in real-life decision making, but other intellectual abilities remain preserved (A. R. Damasio, 1994). Bechara and colleagues developed a gambling task to model certain key aspects of real-life decision making (Bechara et al., 1996). They found that patients with VM lesions were significantly impaired on this gambling paradigm, being overly guided by immediate prospects at the expense of potential long-term consequences. These authors thus conceived of the VM PFC as part of a large-scale system mediating decision making in a process that also requires integration of cognition and emotions. In concordance with this, on the basis of functional imaging, Elliott, Dolan, and Frith (2000) suggested that activity in the VM is most likely to be observed when there is insufficient information available to determine the appropriate course of action. In these circumstances, the VM cortices are more likely to be activated when the problem of what to do next is best solved by integrating information regarding the consequences of the stimuli (Elliott et al., 2000). Taken together, these functions may well be considered as basic components of higher social communicative behaviors, such as processing the meaning of a sarcastic utterance. It might therefore be speculated that the process of understanding sarcasm involves decision making regarding the meanings of the sarcastic utterance. We suggest that in order to reject the literal meaning of the utterance, the listener must comprehend the speaker’s attitude, intentions, and emotional state and then consider alternative explanations. The listener has to integrate all the components embedded in a given social interaction and make a decision regarding the true meaning of the speaker. Damage to the VM impairs this ability and produces deficits in understanding sarcasm.

So maybe it is just a matter of these test subjects having more extensive damage, particularly in the lower right portions of the VM area. But the parts about decision making and lacking the ability to compare conflicting data really stand out.

Lobaczewski says psychopaths lack this ability entirely while asthenics have a limited capacity for it. He says:

These people [asthenic psychopaths], asthenic and hypersensitive, do not indicate the same glaring
deficit in moral feeling and ability to sense a psychological situation as do essential psychopaths.

Also:

It is precisely this phylogenetically developed basis for our experience, and its
emotional dynamism, that allow individuals to develop their feelings and social
bonds, enabling us to intuit other people’s psychological state and individual or
social psychological reality. It is thus possible to perceive and understand human
customs and moral values.

We should note also that test subjects with PFC damage are more likely to make utilitarian moral judgements despite any real understanding of human emotion and morals, simply due to the decision making deficit. I haven't even opened the asthenic can of worms yet.

So how does this apply to frontal characteropathy? Perhaps, like asthenic psychopathy, frontal characteropaths have SOME ability to intuit a psychological situation, but certain functions are damaged. Perhaps the emotional content is cut off from the intellectual content.

That last part is precisely what the paper seems to suggest. So maybe they are only capable of experiencing one or the other, thought or emotion, at any given moment, since you need a fully functioning BA10 to observe the two side by side? Kinda like being hardwired for permanent identification and lack of self-observation.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Thanks, nf3. This cleared some things up for me. Especially the results below:

Consider this from the results section:

VM lesions have been shown to disrupt social and emotional behavior. Common sequelae of orbitofrontal damage include lack of affect and social irresponsibility (Bechara, Tranel, Damasio, & Damasio, 1996). There are also complex deficits in reasoning, judgment, and creativity (Benton, 1968; Eslinger & Damasio, 1985; Mesulam, 1985). Recent neuropsychological studies by Damasio and colleagues found that patients with lesions of the VM manifest impairments in real-life decision making, but other intellectual abilities remain preserved (A. R. Damasio, 1994). Bechara and colleagues developed a gambling task to model certain key aspects of real-life decision making (Bechara et al., 1996). They found that patients with VM lesions were significantly impaired on this gambling paradigm, being overly guided by immediate prospects at the expense of potential long-term consequences. These authors thus conceived of the VM PFC as part of a large-scale system mediating decision making in a process that also requires integration of cognition and emotions. In concordance with this, on the basis of functional imaging, Elliott, Dolan, and Frith (2000) suggested that activity in the VM is most likely to be observed when there is insufficient information available to determine the appropriate course of action. In these circumstances, the VM cortices are more likely to be activated when the problem of what to do next is best solved by integrating information regarding the consequences of the stimuli (Elliott et al., 2000). Taken together, these functions may well be considered as basic components of higher social communicative behaviors, such as processing the meaning of a sarcastic utterance. It might therefore be speculated that the process of understanding sarcasm involves decision making regarding the meanings of the sarcastic utterance. We suggest that in order to reject the literal meaning of the utterance, the listener must comprehend the speaker’s attitude, intentions, and emotional state and then consider alternative explanations. The listener has to integrate all the components embedded in a given social interaction and make a decision regarding the true meaning of the speaker. Damage to the VM impairs this ability and produces deficits in understanding sarcasm.

So maybe it is just a matter of these test subjects having more extensive damage, particularly in the lower right portions of the VM area. But the parts about decision making and lacking the ability to compare conflicting data really stand out.

So the inability to understand sarcasm is probably a result of the inability to "visualize" the various meanings, finding the right one. They use the "shortcut method", jumping to an incorrect conclusion about another's intent.

We should note also that test subjects with PFC damage are more likely to make utilitarian moral judgements despite any real understanding of human emotion and morals, simply due to the decision making deficit. I haven't even opened the asthenic can of worms yet.

Well, Dabrowski mentions psychasthenia and neurasthenia, and some of the things he says about them seem to correspond to asthenic psychopathy. But it seems kind of like hysteria/hysterical personality and obsessive-compulsive/obsessive-compulsive personality; i.e. normal people can experience a lesser version of the disorder as a neurosis, while the those with the personality disorder are that way genetically.

So how does this apply to frontal characteropathy? Perhaps, like asthenic psychopathy, frontal characteropaths have SOME ability to intuit a psychological situation, but certain functions are damaged. Perhaps the emotional content is cut off from the intellectual content.

That last part is precisely what the paper seems to suggest. So maybe they are only capable of experiencing one or the other, thought or emotion, at any given moment, since you need a fully functioning BA10 to observe the two side by side? Kinda like being hardwired for permanent identification and lack of self-observation.

I'm reading a bio on Stalin on and off (by Simon Sebag Montefiore), and this makes sense. Stalin could appear to be genuinely loving and caring at some times, and heartless and cold at others. Blair et al. (in Psychopath: Emotion and the Brain) point out that frontal characteropaths have high levels of reactive aggression. So perhaps the aggression overpowers the emotional content of their empathy, and their split second decision making skills act on this data (the emotional content gets lost in the equation).