Virtuous Humor in Health Care.

This article offers an overview of what humor is-and of how it can be used as a positive tool in dealing with patients and coworkers. After presenting a recent model for categorizing comic styles, which, among other things, separates "light" and "dark" humor, this article examines humor as a virtue in the context of health care.

Trait cheerfulness modulates BOLD response in lateral cortical but not limbic brain areas--a pilot fMRI study.

Having a good "sense of humor" is an important personality characteristic that significantly influences social communication and may represent an important coping strategy. To take things "with humor" does not only represent a state characteristic but also a personality trait that can reliably be assessed with questionnaires like the "state-trait-cheerfulness-inventory" (STCI) by Ruch [Ruch et al., Assessing the "humorous temperament": construction of the facet and standard trait forms of the state-trait-cheerfulness-inventory-STCI, Humor 9 (1996) 303-339].

MRI brain lesion patterns in patients in anoxia-induced vegetative state.

The object of this study was to analyze magnetic resonance imaging data from patients with disorders of consciousness who were suffering from non-traumatically induced brain lesions with respect to the pattern of vulnerability and to examine the associations between the sizes of these lesions and the clinical outcome of the patients. To this end, T1- and T2-weighted brain images were examined in twelve patients in the post-anoxic vegetative state after a median of 21 days after the causative event. Predominant in the characteristic lesion patterns were regions of pathological white matter signals within the frontal and occipital lobes and in the periventricular regions.

Humor and smiling: cortical regions selective for cognitive, affective, and volitional components.

Background: The interrelationships among humor, smiling, and grinning have fascinated philosophers for millennia and neurologists for over a century. A functional dissociation between emotional facial expressions and those under voluntary control was suggested decades ago. Recent functional imaging studies, however, have been somewhat at odds with older studies with respect to the role of the right frontal cortex in the perception of humor.