The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the comprehension of a specific type of humorous situation requires the involvement of brain regions associated to mentalization or Theory of Mind processing and if the electrical stimulation of these areas would facilitate the comprehension of humor. To this aim, we analyzed the effects of tDCS stimulation on the MPFC and rTPJ during the presentation of humorous and non-humorous comic strips. In particular, the stimulus set included strips containing humorous scenes that required ToM abilities in order to be comprehended (Humorous ToM), non-ToM humorous strips (Humorous non-ToM), non-humorous strips which were semantically coherent but not funny (Congruent), and non-humorous strips which were semantically incoherent (Incongruent). Results suggest that the MPFC appears to be involved in both humor processing and in the incongruity resolution process: MPFC stimulation improved the ability to identify a non-humorous incongruent element and to recognize the humorous element of the scene. On the other hand, RTPJ activity doesn't seem to be specifically involved in humorous processing network and appears to be more related to the ability to understand the cognitive element of a social context.

中文翻译：

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MPFC 的阳极经颅直流电刺激可增强体液处理。

本研究的目的是调查对特定类型幽默情境的理解是否需要与心智化或心理理论处理相关的大脑区域的参与，以及这些区域的电刺激是否会促进对幽默的理解。为此，我们在幽默和非幽默漫画的呈现过程中分析了 tDCS 刺激对 MPFC 和 rTPJ 的影响。特别是，刺激集包括包含需要 ToM 能力才能理解的幽默场景的条带 (Humorous ToM)、非 ToM 幽默条带 (Humorous non-ToM)、语义连贯但不有趣的非幽默条带 (Congruent )，以及语义不连贯 (Incongruent) 的非幽默片段。结果表明，MPFC 似乎参与幽默处理和不协调解决过程：MPFC 刺激提高了识别非幽默不协调元素和识别场景幽默元素的能力。另一方面，RTPJ 活动似乎并没有特别参与幽默处理网络，似乎与理解社会背景的认知元素的能力更相关。