The relationship between self-enhancing humor and precuneus volume in young healthy individuals with high and low cognitive empathy

Bingbing Li,Xu Li,Dajun Zhang,Yangu Pan,Jiang Qiu

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-21890-0

Abstract

A self-enhancing humor style (SEHS) plays an important role in the regulation of negative emotion through humorous perspective-taking. Following the mind-reading theories of humor, we investigated the relationship between gray-matter volume (GMV) of brain areas related to theory of mind and SEHS in young college students, using voxel-based morphometry analysis. We then performed a voxel-wise analysis of covariance to assess any moderation effect of cognitive empathy on the relationship. Results demonstrated that higher SEHS scores were associated with larger GMV of the precuneus in the group with high cognitive empathy, but there was no association in the group with low cognitive empathy. These results suggest that high cognitive empathy and increased precuneus volume can predict greater use of self-enhancing humor in young healthy individuals.

Highlights

Humor, that certain psychological state that tends to produce laughter, plays an essential role in social settings
We investigated the relationships among the gray matter volume (GMV) of brain areas related to theory of mind (ToM) and self-enhancing humor style (SEHS) in a large sample
Our results demonstrated that only in the high cognitive empathy group was the GMV of PCU significantly associated with SEHS; no association was found in the low cognitive empathy group

Summary

Introduction

That certain psychological state that tends to produce laughter, plays an essential role in social settings. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies utilizing voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis can reveal regional variation in brain volume related to individual differences in psychological traits[6]. A recent fMRI study demonstrated that the processing of self-enhancing humor primarily activates the brain regions involved in ToM, such as the medial prefrontal cortex, precuneus (PCU), and the temporo-parietal junction[11].

Results

Conclusion