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'Comedy brain cell' that responds to humour found
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 7:01pm BST 04/09/2008
A 'comedy brain cell' has been discovered by scientists, which responds to humour.
# Robocomedian, the comic computer
# How the brain lets us see the funny side
# World's funniest joke unveiled
The unique experiment found that an individual brain cell fires during The Simpsons, and go into action once again as a person freely recalls the same episode.
The same cell became more excited, albeit to a lesser extent, when it came to the TV sitcom Seinfeld too. It was silent when it came to another long running sitcom, Friends.
The advance in understanding the neuroscience of memory is reported in the journal Science by Dr Hagar Gelbard-Sagiv of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, Prof Itzhak Fried of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues.
They showed clips of The Simpsons and other television programs to a small group of 13 epilepsy patients who had electrodes implanted into their brains at UCLA medical centre to help find where their siezures start.
The same electrodes could be used to monitor single brain cells in the brain's hippocampus, a structure known to play a central role in memory, and related structures as the clips played.
As the people freely recalled the shows minutes later, the same brain cells increased their firing rate again, and with amazing specificity.
In one patient they found in one structure, the entorhinal cortex, which is the gateway into the hippocampus, a nerve cell that responded most vigorously to the Simpsons of all the 48 different clips.
When Homer, Marge et al appeared, the firing rate went to more than 15 times per second, compared with a couple of times per second for other clips, or blank periods. This firing lasted for several seconds and even beyond the actual time that the clip was on the screen.
Given the vast range of experiences we are exposed to, the team says that each brain cell probably responds to more than one clip, though the rules that select which ones it responds to are not understood.
The Simpsons brain cell also responded weakly to Seinfeld.
"The one cell which responds to The Simpsons and had a weak response to Seinfeld did not have a response to another comic sitcom (Friends)," says Prof Fried.
"It is highly speculative to conclude that it is a "comedy cell", and even if it were it is just one cell in this study of many cells."
The critical finding, says Prof Fried, was that the same select nerve cells went into action when people recalled these memories too.
Remarkably, the cells sprang to life even before the people told the researchers that the memory of the show had "come to mind," by 1.5 thousandths of a second, suggesting a direct link between free recall and the "replay" of cells in this portion of the brain.
The hippocampus is found in many other creatures, such as mice and rats who rely on it to navigate.
Hippocampus cells in these species show replay of past sequences but until now this could not be linked to recall of memories as obviously these species cannot tell us what they experience. This link has now been made.
The team says that this hippocampal machinery has likely been preserved in humans and put to a more elaborate and abstract use.
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 7:01pm BST 04/09/2008
A 'comedy brain cell' has been discovered by scientists, which responds to humour.
# Robocomedian, the comic computer
# How the brain lets us see the funny side
# World's funniest joke unveiled
The unique experiment found that an individual brain cell fires during The Simpsons, and go into action once again as a person freely recalls the same episode.
The same cell became more excited, albeit to a lesser extent, when it came to the TV sitcom Seinfeld too. It was silent when it came to another long running sitcom, Friends.
The advance in understanding the neuroscience of memory is reported in the journal Science by Dr Hagar Gelbard-Sagiv of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, Prof Itzhak Fried of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues.
They showed clips of The Simpsons and other television programs to a small group of 13 epilepsy patients who had electrodes implanted into their brains at UCLA medical centre to help find where their siezures start.
The same electrodes could be used to monitor single brain cells in the brain's hippocampus, a structure known to play a central role in memory, and related structures as the clips played.
As the people freely recalled the shows minutes later, the same brain cells increased their firing rate again, and with amazing specificity.
In one patient they found in one structure, the entorhinal cortex, which is the gateway into the hippocampus, a nerve cell that responded most vigorously to the Simpsons of all the 48 different clips.
When Homer, Marge et al appeared, the firing rate went to more than 15 times per second, compared with a couple of times per second for other clips, or blank periods. This firing lasted for several seconds and even beyond the actual time that the clip was on the screen.
Given the vast range of experiences we are exposed to, the team says that each brain cell probably responds to more than one clip, though the rules that select which ones it responds to are not understood.
The Simpsons brain cell also responded weakly to Seinfeld.
"The one cell which responds to The Simpsons and had a weak response to Seinfeld did not have a response to another comic sitcom (Friends)," says Prof Fried.
"It is highly speculative to conclude that it is a "comedy cell", and even if it were it is just one cell in this study of many cells."
The critical finding, says Prof Fried, was that the same select nerve cells went into action when people recalled these memories too.
Remarkably, the cells sprang to life even before the people told the researchers that the memory of the show had "come to mind," by 1.5 thousandths of a second, suggesting a direct link between free recall and the "replay" of cells in this portion of the brain.
The hippocampus is found in many other creatures, such as mice and rats who rely on it to navigate.
Hippocampus cells in these species show replay of past sequences but until now this could not be linked to recall of memories as obviously these species cannot tell us what they experience. This link has now been made.
The team says that this hippocampal machinery has likely been preserved in humans and put to a more elaborate and abstract use.
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