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Language areas on the left side of the brain interpret the literal meaning of words and the frontal lobes and the right side of the brain understand the social and emotional context. The right ventromedial prefrontal cortex integrates the literal meaning with the social/emotional context, which will gives meaning to the concept of sarcasm. A lesion in each region in the network can impair sarcasm. If someone has a problem understanding a social situation, he or she may fail to understand the literal language.
 Researchers from Haifa University, Israel enrolled 58 subjects -- 25 people with prefrontal lobe damage, 16 with damage to the posterior lobe of the brain and 17 healthy volunteers. The study participants heard tape-recorded stories, some sarcastic and some neutral. The volunteers who had damage to their prefrontal lobes were unable to correctly interpret the sarcastic story, while all of the other participants could.
While the subjects in the 'prefrontal group' are still able to hold and understand a conversation. Their problem is understanding when people speak in 'indirect speech' and use irony, idioms and metaphors. They take each sentence literally and just understand the sentence as it is and cannot see if the true meaning is the opposite of the literal meaning.
The researchers suggest that even subtle differences in the wiring of this part of the brain can leave people unable to empathise with others or understand sarcastic comments or jokes.
These results are published in this month's issue of Neuropsychology.
Full article (pdf)
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