Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
Research Center for Education and Mind Sciences, NTHU, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
Sci Rep. 2018 Oct 18;8(1):15425. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-33623-4.
Humor elicits feelings of amusement and can be thought of as a social reward. We identified distinct mesolimbic reward system (MRS) processing patterns for monetary and humorous rewards. During both the reward anticipation and outcome phases, the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) were active in response to monetary cues and monetary gains, while the amygdala and midbrain showed a differential response to humorous rewards, apparently driven by the hedonic enjoyment and appreciation of humor consumption. Psychophysiological interaction analysis (PPI) further demonstrated the functional coupling of the amygdala-midbrain circuit in response to humorous gains during the reward outcome phase, while neural signaling was observed in the NAc-ACC circuit during both the reward anticipation and outcome phases in response to monetary rewards. This is consistent with a view in which the NAc plays a key role in the 'motivation brain', and the amygdala in the 'hedonic brain'. The findings further suggest that the neural mechanisms underlying reward consumption are more modality-specific than those underlying reward anticipation. Our study contributes to a growing understanding of neural responses to social rewards and represent an important first step toward understanding the neural processing of humor as one significant type of social reward.
幽默能引发愉悦感，可以被视为一种社交奖励。我们发现，金钱奖励和幽默奖励在中脑边缘奖励系统（MRS）中有不同的加工模式。在奖励预期和结果阶段，伏隔核（NAc）和前扣带皮层（ACC）对金钱线索和金钱收益都有反应，而杏仁核和中脑对幽默奖励则有不同的反应，显然是由幽默消费的享乐和欣赏驱动的。心理生理交互分析（PPI）进一步表明，在奖励结果阶段，幽默收益时杏仁核-中脑回路的功能耦合，而在奖励预期和结果阶段，对金钱奖励的反应中，NAc-ACC 回路中存在神经信号。这与一种观点一致，即 NAc 在“动机大脑”中起关键作用，而杏仁核在“享乐大脑”中起关键作用。研究结果进一步表明，奖励消费的神经机制比奖励预期的神经机制更具模态特异性。我们的研究有助于加深对社交奖励的神经反应的理解，并代表了理解幽默作为一种重要社交奖励的神经处理的重要的第一步。
