Brain hemodynamic activity during viewing and re-viewing of comedy movies explained by experienced humor

Description: 20 healthy volunteers (age range: 20–25, 7 females, normal or corrected to normal vision) participated in the main experiment that consisted of fMRI scanning session and behavioral self-ratings. Two subjects were excluded from fMRI data analysis due to technical problems with their fMRI data. The subjects were presented with three short silent movie clips twice, in an order that was randomized across subjects, during 3T (Tim Trio, Siemens, Erlangen, Germany) fMRI with a 32-channel head coil. (Echo-planar imaging (EPI); TR/TE = 2000/30 ms, field-of-view = 220 × 220 mm, matrix = 64 × 64, in-plane 3.4 × 3.4 mm, slice thickness = 3.4 mm, flip angle = 90°). Thirty-three axial slices were acquired to cover the whole brain. The movie clips were taken from comedy-genre movies “The Circus” and “City Lights”, directed by Charles Chaplin and produced by Charles Chaplin Productions in 1928 and 1931, respectively. The subjects were re-shown, immediately after the fMRI session, and without advance warning, the three silent comedy clips on a PC screen and were asked to recall and rate, on a Likert scale running from 1 to 10, once every 15 seconds, the degree of humorousness that they had experienced due to the humorous events depicted in the movies

Related article: http://doi.org/10.1038/srep27741