Have you ever thrown out a snarky, sarcastic quip and had it misinterpreted as solid truth-telling? Well, there may be reason to be concerned for the person you’ve talked to. A new study shows people who can’t pick up on sarcasm or a straight-out lie, may be exhibiting an early sign of dementia.
For the study, researchers asked 175 people, over half of whom had dementia, to watch videos of two people talking. At different times in the tape one person would lie or say something sarcastic. The viewers were also given both verbal and nonverbal clues to help pinpoint the false or insincere statements. Next, the subjects were asked yes/no questions about what they had seen.
People suffering from Alzheimer's disease and a similar condition, frontotemporal dementia, were included in the study, as well as healthy individuals. Healthy people easily picked out the lies and sarcasm, but those with frontotemporal dementia found it hard to distinguish among lies, sarcasm and fact.
The researchers also found that patients with Alzheimer's performed better on this test.
The team used MRIs to make accurate maps of the brains of the subjects in the study. This allowed them to measure the volumes of different regions of the brain showing that the sizes of those regions correlated with the inability to detect sarcasm or lying.
