Coulson Seana, Lovett Christopher
Cognitive Science Department, 0515, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0515, USA.
Brain Res Cogn Brain Res. 2004 May;19(3):275-88. doi: 10.1016/j.cogbrainres.2003.11.015.
To address the impact of differences in language lateralization on joke comprehension, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded as 16 left- and 16 right-handed adults read one-line jokes and non-funny control stimuli ("A replacement player hit a home run with my girl/ball,"). In right-handers, jokes elicited a late positivity 500-900 ms post-stimulus onset that was largest over right hemisphere (RH) centro-parietal electrode sites, and a slow sustained negativity over anterior left lateral sites. In left-handers, jokes elicited a late positivity 500-900 ms post-onset that was larger and more broadly distributed than in the right-handers' ERPs. In right-handed women, the late positivity was larger over RH electrode sites. In left-handed women, the late positivity was bilaterally symmetric. The highly asymmetric slow sustained negativity over left anterior electrode sites was absent from left-handers' ERPs to jokes. Differences may reflect more efficient inter-hemispheric communication in the left-handers, as they are reputed to have relatively larger corpus callosal areas than right-handers. Results support the portrait of more bilateral language representation among left-handers, and suggest language lateralization affects high-level language comprehension tasks such as joke comprehension.
为了研究语言功能侧化差异对笑话理解的影响，研究人员记录了16名左利手和16名右利手成年人在阅读单行笑话和无趣的对照刺激语（“替补球员和我的女友/球击出了本垒打”）时的事件相关脑电位（ERP）。在右利手人群中，笑话在刺激开始后500 - 900毫秒引发了一个晚期正电位，在右半球（RH）中央顶叶电极部位最为明显，同时在左前外侧部位出现了一个缓慢持续的负电位。在左利手人群中，笑话在开始后500 - 900毫秒引发的晚期正电位比右利手人群的ERP更大且分布更广泛。在右利手女性中，晚期正电位在RH电极部位更大。在左利手女性中，晚期正电位呈双侧对称。左利手人群对笑话的ERP中没有左前电极部位高度不对称的缓慢持续负电位。这些差异可能反映了左利手人群半球间交流更高效，因为他们的胼胝体区域据说比右利手人群相对更大。研究结果支持了左利手人群中语言表征更具双侧性的观点，并表明语言功能侧化会影响诸如笑话理解等高级语言理解任务。
