For more information see here. For inquiries write to: Barbara Wild bawild@t-online.de or Irina Falkenberg irina.falkenberg@med.uni-tuebingen.de
Topics include:
Dr Bernie Warren
Clown Doctor and Professor
Drama in Education and Community
University of Windsor
Canada
Email: bernie_warren@hotmail.com
Dr Rob Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House
149B Wroslyn Road
Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HR
Email: rf@inter-disciplinary.net
Journal Citations and Abstracts
Hemispheric asymmetries and joke comprehension.
Neuropsychologia. 2005;43(1):128-41.
Cognitive Science Department, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0515, USA. coulson@cogsci.ucsd.edu
Joke comprehension deficits in patients with right hemisphere (RH)damage raise the question of the role of the intact RH in understanding jokes. One suggestion is that semantic, or meaning, activations are different in the RH and LH, and RH meanings are particularly important for joke comprehension. To assess whether hypothesized differences in semantic activation in the two hemispheres were relevant to joke comprehension, we recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as healthy adults read laterally presented "punch words" to one-line jokes and nonjoke controls. Jokes presented to the RVF/LH elicited larger amplitude N400 than the nonjoke endings; when presented to the LVF/RH, the joke and nonjoke endings elicited N400s of equal amplitude.This finding suggests that semantic activations in the two hemispheres do differ, with RH semantic activation facilitating joke comprehension.
Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, December 2004, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 351-361(11)
Abstract: Therapeutic use of humor in patients with antisocial personality disorders is scarcely studied until now. However, therapeutic use of humor could contribute to a growth of social-emotional and moral awareness and capacities, enhancement of self-insight and reality testing, and associated therapeutic progress in these patients. Suggestions are made for a) adequate and safe use of humor in the therapeutic context, and b) effective selection of patients. More research is needed into the effects and adequate strategies of therapeutic humor in different categories of antisocial patients. Furthermore, it is also necessary to investigate how humor could be integrated well in various psychotherapeutic approaches.
Source: Joint Commission: The Source, January 2004, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 8-9(2)
Publisher: Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare
Conflict monitoring and anterior cingulate cortex: an update
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Volume 8, Issue 12 , December 2004, Pages 539-546
University of Pennsylvania, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, 3720 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 10104-6241, USA Princeton University, NJ, and University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA University of California, Davis, CA, USA One hypothesis concerning the human dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is that it functions, in part, to signal the occurrence of conflicts in information processing, thereby triggering compensatory adjustments in cognitive control. Since this idea was first proposed, a great deal of relevant empirical evidence has accrued. This evidence has largely corroborated the conflict-monitoring hypothesis, and some very recent work has provided striking new support for the theory. At the same time, other findings have posed specific challenges, especially concerning the way the theory addresses the processing of errors. Recent research has also begun to shed light on the larger function of the ACC, suggesting some new possibilities concerning how conflict monitoring might fit into the cingulate's overall role in cognition and action.
Current Directions in Psychological Science 13.6 (2004): 215-218.
Humor in autism and Asperger syndrome.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2004 Oct; 34(5):521-31.
Research has shown that individuals with autism and Asperger syndrome are impaired in humor appreciation, although anecdotal and parental reports provide some evidence to the contrary. This paper reviews the cognitive and affective processes involved in humor and recent neurological findings. It examines humor expression and understanding in autism and Asperger syndrome in the context of the main psychological theories (Theory of Mind, Executive Functions, Weak Central Coherence and Laterization models) and associated neural substrates. In the concluding sections, examples of humor displayed by individuals with autism/Asperger syndrome which appear to challenge the above theories are analyzed and areas for further research are suggested.
Personality and Individual Differences. Volume 38, Issue 2, 2005. pp. 365-377
Word Ways, 2004 , vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 256-257
Children, Literature in Education, December 2004, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 367-379
Mental Retardation- American Association on Mental Retardation, 2004, vol. 42, no. 6, pp. 427-444
Avant Garde Critical Studies, 1 January 2004, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 37-54(18)
In Italian literary history the Scapigliatura (1860-1880) has generally been named the first Italian avant-garde. Carlo Dossi understands umorismo as an aesthetical scheme to express scepticism against any system of order and meaning. Parodies and absurd stories are as well meant to attack the dominating literary forms. To illustrate the possibilities of transgression, the parodies Ancora un canto alla luna (1864) by Emilio Praga and the stories In cerca di morte (1869) and La lettera U (1869) by I. U. Tarchetti will be discussed. The discussion reveals that by using parodies of Manzoni or Leopardi as a means of breaking up the tradition ends in a dilemma for the Scapigliatura. The parody's recourse to canonized texts remains authoritative even though the texts of the Scapigliatura prepare the historical avant-gardes. In this manner umorismo, parody and absurdity itself become the measure in assessing the Scapigliatura as an avant-garde.
Avant Garde Critical Studies, 1 January 2004, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 85-95(11)
On the one hand Apollinaire's manifest L'Antitradition futuriste and his poem "Chantre" show convincingly his avant-garde approach, but on the other hand, in these texts the author turns away from an uncritical avant-garde position. Based on the humour theory of Pirandello, this article argues that Apollinaire tends to reconcile his own avant-garde position withan implicit critique of the avant-garde by using humour as a means of relating contradictory positions.
Physiology and Behavior, (July 09, 2003), 10.1016/S0031-9384(03)00159-8
Abstract Paul MacLean's concept of epistemics‹the neuroscientific study of subjective experience‹requires animal brain research that can be related to predictions concerning the internal experiences of humans. Especially robust relationships come from studies of the emotional/affective processes that arise from subcortical brain systems shared by all mammals. Recent affective neuroscience research has yielded the discovery of play- and tickle-induced ultrasonic vocalization patterns (~50-kHz chirps) in rats may have more than a passing resemblance to primitive human laughter. In this paper, we summarize a dozen reasons for the working hypothesis that such rat vocalizations reflect a type of positive affect that may have evolutionary relations to the joyfulness of human childhood laughter commonly accompanying social play. The neurobiological nature of human laughter is discussed, and the relevance of such ludic processes for understanding clinical disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorders (ADHD), addictive urges and mood imbalances are discussed.
This newsletter issue accompanies HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research, Issue 2, Volume 18.