June 10, 2005

Sarcasm Explained? Right.

By DAVID GLENN

Alexander Portnoy famously tries to cope with his hectoring mother's sarcasm in the 1969 novel Portnoy's Complaint by visiting a psychiatrist. Now it turns out that he might have been better off visiting a brain surgeon and getting a few lesions in his ventromedial nucleus.

Three Israeli neurologists reported last month that people with damage in certain regions of the brain have severe difficulty comprehending sarcastic comments.

Their study, which appears in the journal

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