Humour processing deficits in individuals with social anhedonia

Humor processing and its relationship with clinical features in patients with first-episode schizophrenia

Humor, a higher-order social cognitive process unique to humans, is commonly impaired in patients with chronic schizophrenia. However, humor processing and its association with the clinical characteristics in the early stage of the illness remain unknown. In this study, we investigated humor processing and its relationship with clinical features in patients with first-episode schizophrenia (FES). We recruited 45 patients with FES and 44 healthy controls matched for age, sex, and education level. The participants completed the Picture Humor Processing Task (HPT-p) and Video Humor Processing Task (HPT-v), which evaluated humor comprehension and appreciation, and a questionnaire assessing their humor styles. Clinical participants also completed clinical and social functioning measurements. Signal detection theory analysis was used to calculate the d' and β values, which represent the detection of humor signals in the comprehension phase and inner criteria of the humor appreciation phase, respectively. In the HPT-p, patients with FES showed a higher false alarm rate (p = 0.048) than healthy controls, whereas the hitting rate, signal recognition ability (d' value), and intrinsic evaluation criterion (β value) were comparable between the two participants groups. In the HPT-v, patients with FES showed lower within-group coherence in the funniness rating (p = 0.023) than healthy controls. In addition, the false alarm rate in the HPT-p and negative symptoms effectively predicted social functioning in patients with FES (R2 = 0.681, p < 0.001). Our results indicate that impairment of humor comprehension in patients with schizophrenia is generated in the first episode and contributes to social functioning deficits, which require early recognition and intervention.

Influence of emotional states on incongruity-resolution and nonsense humour processing

Humour processing is complex and may be influenced by an individual's emotional state. This study explores the differences in incongruity-resolution and nonsense joke humour processing between three groups with different emotional states (positive, neutral and negative). Each group consisted of 32 participants. The positive and negative emotion groups were asked to elicit positive and negative emotions, respectively, through autobiographical recall. In contrast, the neutral emotion group was asked to answer questions unrelated to emotions. Participants were also asked to rate their emotional valence, arousal and conformity with the provided emotion words. Subsequently, they were directed to rate their humour appreciation, humour comprehension and level of surprise at the jokes. The results indicate that these variables interacted with the level of amusement derived from the two humour types. The positive emotion group perceived nonsense jokes as funnier than the negative emotion group, while the negative emotion group perceived nonsense jokes as less amusing than incongruity-resolution jokes. No significant difference was found between the three emotion groups in terms of humour comprehension and surprise at the jokes. The results deepen the understanding of the correlation between emotional states and processing of different humour types.

Prevalence of anhedonia, anxiety, and their impact on food consumption among postgraduate Qassim University students

Objectives

A prevalent symptom of many mental health issues, such as depression, is anhedonia, which is the inability to feel joy or pleasure. Tension-induced sensations, anxious thoughts, and bodily alterations are the hallmarks of anxiety. One known environmental factor that affects mental health is diet. In this implication, eating appetizing meals has been proposed to reduce unpleasant feelings like worry. This study aimed to indicate whether eating habits among postgraduate students are related to symptoms of anhedonia and/or anxiety.

Methods

In a cross-sectional study, responses were collected from a total of 393 postgraduate students. Each student self-answered the General Anxiety Disorder-7, Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale for Anhedonia, and the Food Consumption Questionnaire and reported the body weight.

Results

The prevalence of anhedonia was 28%, moderate anxiety and severe anxiety were 15.7 and 10.9%, respectively. In this research, results showed that sugary foods, fast food, and fried foods were positively associated with anxiety and anhedonia. However, fruits and vegetables were negatively associated with anxiety and anhedonia. Linear regression showed that fruit and drinking water consumption was significant with the number of meals/day. There was no significance between the number of meals per day and anhedonia; however, there was statistical significance with the total GAD-7 scale score regarding the number of meals/per day.

Conclusion

Anhedonia and anxiety are associated with food consumption, especially foods rich in sugars, fast and fried, which help to increase positive feelings. Future studies should focus on understanding the relationship between food consumption and following a healthy diet and improving and reducing symptoms of anxiety and anhedonia in those who suffer from a stressful or task-filled lifestyle, such as students, especially postgraduate students. In addition, it focuses on the importance of awareness of the symptoms of anhedonia, which is classified as a depressive disease, and how to control anxiety to maintain better mental health.

Hypo- and hyper-activation in frontotemporal lobe during humor processing in patients with first episode schizophrenia

BACKGROUND

Patients with schizophrenia present difficulties in humor recognition and appreciation, but the neural mechanism of these deficits remains unclear. This study aimed to elucidate neural substrates underlying humor processing in patients with first episode schizophrenia (FES).

METHODS

This study recruited 40 patients with FES (illness duration ≤ 4 years) and 31 healthy controls matching for age, gender and education level. Participants completed a fMRI verbal humor processing paradigm comprising 96 stories, half for funny punch-line condition and the other half for unfunny condition. Participants were required to judge whether the story was funny or not. Signal detection theory (SDT) analysis was used to calculate d' and β values which represented sensitivity and inner criteria for humor signals respectively. The funny-unfunny contrast was analyzed to identify the brain regions related with humor processing. d' and β values were put into the imaging regression analysis.

RESULTS

Patients with FES showed significantly lower hit rate and sensitivity of humor signals (d'). At the neural level, patients with FES hypo-activated in ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) while hyper-activated in middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and superior temporal gyrus (STG) compared to controls. In addition, activity in vmPFC and ACC was positively associated with d' and β values, while activity in STG was positively associated with β values in the clinical group.

CONCLUSIONS

Patients with FES exhibited decreased sensitivity to humor signals. Hypo-activation in frontal regions and hyper-activation in temporal regions were associated with the humor processing deficits.

The cognitive architecture of verbal humor in schizophrenia

Previous literature showed that people with schizophrenia have difficulties in humor comprehension and might differ from controls in the appreciation of humor, i.e., in perceived funniness. However, the cognitive architecture that underlies humor impairment in this population remains unclear, with humorous items sometimes assessed in the context of the communicative-pragmatic profiling and sometimes included in Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks. Here we enrolled 116 people with schizophrenia and 116 healthy controls, who were administered a task including jokes based on sound aspects and jokes based on mental aspects (Phonological and Mental Jokes task). Both comprehension accuracy (ability to select the funny ending of the joke) and appreciation (ratings of funniness) were evaluated, together with other linguistic, cognitive, and clinical measures. Results highlighted a diffuse impairment in humor comprehension in schizophrenia compared to controls, with mental jokes being more difficult for both groups. Humor comprehension was robustly associated with the patients' global pragmatic and linguistic profile, while the association with ToM was negligible. Another remarkable finding was the increased appreciation of humor in individuals with schizophrenia, who rated jokes (both correctly and incorrectly completed) as funnier than controls did. Funniness ratings were not predicted by any measure, pointing to a dimension untied from cognition or psychopathology. Overall, this study offers evidence - on a considerably large sample - of altered humor understanding and appreciation in schizophrenia, sketching a cognitive architecture where humor impairment stands together with communicative impairment, rather than with social cognition. This has implications not only for the assessment of humor, but also for how to treat it in patients to improve their ability to navigate the social world.

Mental health memes: beneficial or aversive in relation to psychiatric symptoms?

Composed of an image and short caption, internet memes visually depict an element of a culture or behavioural system, in a humorous way that contextually relates to a particular demographic. Typically, they are rapidly shared, with many variations of the original. Online interaction with internet memes has become a crucial psychosocial aspect of digital culture, which have recently become well established in popular media by consistently maintaining culturally topical and socially salient references. Increasingly, many pages are dedicated to sharing memes related to the symptom experience of specific psychiatric disorders. Despite their popularity, the individual motivation for the observation and sharing of mental health memes remains poorly understood. While several psychiatrists and media outlets perceive internet memes related to mental health difficulties to be associated with adverse consequences, the empirical evidence fails to support this notion. Among individuals experiencing psychiatric difficulties, we explore whether interacting with mental health memes involves adverse consequences, or rather serve as a beneficial coping mechanism. Here, evaluation of the literature indicates that most psychiatrically vulnerable individuals report positive experiences when engaging with such memes. More specifically, they are perceived to facilitate a humorous take on a negative experience and situation, and the perception of peer-support through social bonds with others experiencing similar symptoms. While mental health memes typically depict dark and negative humour, their proximal nature to those experiencing psychiatric symptoms may be considered contextually positive. As such, to conclude, we discuss the role of contextual humour in facilitating cognitive reappraisal of negative thoughts and experiences. Furthermore, we set an agenda to address key methodological limitations of existing work while providing suggestions for future research.

Internet memes related to the COVID-19 pandemic as a potential coping mechanism for anxiety

This study examined whether significantly anxious individuals differed from non-anxious individuals in their perceptual ratings of internet memes related to the Covid-19 pandemic, whilst considering the mediating role of emotion regulation. Eighty individuals presenting clinically significant anxiety symptoms (indicating ≥ 15 on the GAD-7) and 80 non-anxious controls (indicating ≤ 4) rated the emotional valance, humour, relatability, shareability, and offensiveness of 45 Covid-19 internet memes. A measure of emotion regulation difficulties was also completed. The perception of humour, relatability, and shareability were all greater amongst anxious individuals relative to non-anxious controls. These differences were not mediated by emotion regulation deficits. Internet memes related to the current Covid-19 pandemic may tentatively serve as coping mechanism for individuals experiencing severe symptoms of anxiety.