tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post114157605703480761..comments2024-03-14T23:52:09.893-07:00Comments on The Neurocritic: Humor, Hot Flashes, and Empathy for PainThe Neurocritichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-1141778142746318042006-03-07T16:35:00.000-08:002006-03-07T16:35:00.000-08:00It could be that the neural correlates of humor, h...It could be that the neural correlates of humor, hot flashes, and empathy are all the same. This would not be a problem for some cartographers of cognition (and emotion) who don't really care about phenomenology (i.e., laughing at a joke *seems* to be a different experience than "feeling someone else's pain" or having a hot flash, but some circuit in the brain can't distinguish between these experiences...at least at the crude level of analysis permitted by fMRI).<BR/><BR/>OR it could be that the similarly-located BOLD activations observed in fMRI studies of humor, hot flashes, and empathy are driven by some underlying commonality (let's say an increase in autonomic functions such as heart rate, blood pressure, and sweating). There is some evidence that the brain areas mentioned above are, in fact, sensitive to increases in arousal and autonomic activation (see the post "More Lies... Damn Lies..."). If the degree of activation in the anterior cingulate cortex and frontoinsular cortex are correlated with autonomic activation, one would of course expect hot flashes to be the worst [NOTE: the scanner environment would preclude humor that induces guffawing and belly-laughing]. Anyway, one would need to test peri-menopausal women on humor and empathy for that comparison...The Neurocritichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-1141592728033033242006-03-05T13:05:00.000-08:002006-03-05T13:05:00.000-08:00Cognitive neuroscientists want to identify neural ...Cognitive neuroscientists want to identify neural correlates of X, where X is some ability or mental state that humans care about (say, emapthy).<BR/><BR/>The neuroscritic implies that it is problematic to find that some of the neural correlates of X are the same as the neural correlates of a seemingly unrelated ability/state Y. Why?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com