Intracranial study in humans: Neural spectral changes during watching comedy movie of Charlie Chaplin

Vadim Axelrod, Camille Rozier, Elisa Sohier, Katia Lehongre, Claude Adam, Virginie Lambrecq, Vincent Navarro, Lionel Naccache

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Humor plays a prominent role in our lives. Thus, understanding the cognitive and neural mechanisms of humor is particularly important. Previous studies that investigated neural substrates of humor used functional MRI and to a lesser extent EEG. In the present study, we conducted intracranial recording in human patients, enabling us to obtain the signal with high temporal precision from within specific brain locations. Our analysis focused on the temporal lobe and the surrounding areas, the temporal lobe was most densely covered in our recording. Thirteen patients watched a fragment of a Charlie Chaplin movie. An independent group of healthy participants rated the same movie fragment, helping us to identify the most funny and the least funny frames of the movie. We compared neural activity occurring during the most funny and least funny frames across frequencies in the range of 1–170 Hz. The most funny compared to least funny parts of the movie were associated with activity modulation in the broadband high-gamma (70−170 Hz; mostly activation) and to a lesser extent gamma band (40−69Hz; activation) and low frequencies (1−12 Hz, delta, theta, alpha bands; mostly deactivation). With regard to regional specificity, we found three types of brain areas: (I) temporal pole, middle and inferior temporal gyrus (both anterior and posterior) in which there was both activation in the high-gamma/gamma bands and deactivation in low frequencies; (II) ventral part of the temporal lobe such as the fusiform gyrus, in which there was mostly deactivation the low frequencies; (III) posterior temporal cortex and its environment, such as the middle occipital and the temporo-parietal junction, in which there was activation in the high-gamma/gamma band. Overall, our results suggest that humor appreciation might be achieved by neural activity across the frequency spectrum.

Original languageEnglish
Article number108558
JournalNeuropsychologia
Volume185
DOIs
StatePublished - 4 Jul 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Elsevier Ltd

Funding

We express our deepest gratitude to the patients for participating in this study. We thank Tal Seidel Malkinson for her help with conducting the experiments, Yarden Nativ for the suggestions at the initial stage of data analysis, and Alexandra Agiv for contributing to analysis of the behavioral experiment. This study was supported by an Alon Fellowship for outstanding young faculty members by the Israeli Council for Higher Education (VA) and the program “Investissements d'avenir” ANR-10-IAIHU-06 and the ICM-OCIRP . The funding source had no involvement in the study.

FundersFunder number
ICM-OCIRP
Investissements d'avenirANR-10-IAIHU-06
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Council for Higher Education

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