Sarcasm finds medical use in dementia detection

[Wickerman]

SYDNEY (AFP) – Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit, but Australian scientists are using it to diagnose dementia, according to research published on Friday.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales found that patients under the age of 65 suffering from frontotemporal dementia (FTD), the second most common form of dementia, cannot detect when someone is being sarcastic.

The study, described by its authors as groundbreaking, helps explain why patients with the condition behave the way they do and why, for example, they are unable to pick up their caregivers' moods, the research showed.

"This is significant because if care-givers are angry, sad or depressed, the patient won't pick this up. It is often very upsetting for family members," said John Hodges, the senior author of the paper published in "Brain".

"(FTD) patients present changes in personality and behaviour. They find it difficult to interact with people, they don't pick up on social cues, they lack empathy, they make bad judgements," he told AFP.

"People with FTD become very gullible and they often part with large amounts of money," he said, adding that one in 4,000 people around the world are afflicted with the condition.


--snip--

"One of the things about FTD patients is that they don't detect humour -- they are very bad at double meaning and a lot of humour (other than sarcasm) is based on double meaning," he said.

--snip--

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081212/ts_afp/healthaustraliadementia

I've often observed many freeper types are devoid of a sense of humor... :think:

[Mist]

1. I thought slipping on a banana peel was the lowest form of humor. Sarcasm can

be an art form!

And yes, freepers and other authoritarian conservatives seem completely incapable of sensing or interpreting humor (except for the banana peel skid).

[Wickerman]

2. the banana peel slip has to happen to a minority, a handicapped person, or

insert your own person from a historically underserved population for a true authoritarian conservative to get a belly laugh, of course.

[Warpy]

3. It seems the whole Republican Party is suffering from FTD

because they're the most sarcasm blind people on the planet, also the most gullible.

[mopinko]

4. ditto

[supernova]

5. This makes sense

because language-based humor -- sarcasm, satire, puns, and so on -- require you to not only know how to use language but be able to think about it in a meta sense -- think about how people use language to communicate in a cultural sense and be able to control it so that you can produce these same kinds of jokes yourself.

That's a higher order thinking skill. And that's what people start noticing that goes missing.

[Celebration]

6. this may show up first, I think

Sadly, thinking of a friend. Really hits home with her.............. there is a missing link there. Totally noticed it today, but otherwise she is high functioning. Very telling.

[Silent3]

7. Does the fact that they refer to patients under 65...

...imply that for patients 65 and older there's an expectation of a loss of ability to detect sarcasm, apart from any particular diagnosis?