Nearly all of the [friends or relatives of the patients] said, with hindsight, that they had noticed a shift in the nine years before the dementia had been diagnosed. Many of the patients had developed a dark sense of humour — for example, laughing at tragic events in the news or in their personal lives. The dementia patients also tended to prefer slapstick to satirical humour, when compared with 21 healthy people of a similar age.What does this say about people who begin with a "dark" sense of humor and laugh at the pain of others?
Dr [Camilla] Clark said: "These were marked changes - completely inappropriate humour well beyond the realms of even distasteful humour. For example, one man laughed when his wife badly scalded herself."
November 10, 2015
"Change in sense of humour 'a sign of impending dementia.'"
"The University College London study involved patients with frontotemporal dementia, with the results appearing in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease."
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25 comments:
It's pathological.
It also seems to indicate people with no sense of humor are unsafe people. Taking funny ironies literally whether in scripture or in popular culture Victimology is a pathology.
Trump is ironic all of the time. Which irritates the super serious pathology guys. They flock to the serious all of the time Doctor Carson
...and right after the Bobbit post!
How old is Laslo?
Sense of humor is a very sensitive indicator of intellectual function. I mention this in my book chapter about a patient of mine who lost her entire memory after a cardiac arrest but recovered her life. She had no memory of her life before she awakened in the hospital.
I found the thread for this post:
I repeat, this is Althouse's doing. She and her corrupt tenured colleagues in academia are responsible.
The willful idiot destruction of our great Christian patriarchy is at the root of this.
Althouse is responsible for this. She is an intensely destructive, rotten woman. Tenure freed her from any responsibility for her vile stupidity and destructive philosophy.
You only have to look at the creep show of her personal (not so personal) life to see the vile corruption freedom from responsibility for her actions and her evil philosophy produced.
The ruthless, rotten and nihilistic woman who writes this blog brought this destruction of our institutions and the demoralization of our children down on us.
I naturally thought of mental illness also.
Mean people suck.
Somebody (I forget who) made the observation that Charlie Chaplin movies no longer seem funny in part because so much of the humor is based on laughing at others' misfortune. It's just too cruel for Western tastes.
Scott, I remember when my brother came home from his Sociology 101 class circa 1966, and announced that most all humor was based on others' misfortune. He was normally a pretty funny guy but the prof really got to him. It lasted about two weeks IIRC.
Anyway I've noticed I don't laugh like I used to. But it seems like when others around me laugh, it's some kind of nervous laugh because nothing was funny. It's just considered nice to laugh, or something.
@Carol, I think in 1966 that might have been more valid. But fast forward almost 50 years and we find a different society. The little SJW monsters being cranked out by our colleges and universities learn that it's wrong to laugh -- it's something to be ashamed of. Chris Rock and others have said that they won't play college campuses anymore for that reason.
Q: How many militant lesbian feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: That's not funny.
...used to be funny. Now it's not funny. It's true. And it's sad.
What does this say about people who begin with a "dark" sense of humor and laugh at the pain of others?
I dunno Ann, what do you think it says about you?
@Ann:What does this say about people who begin with a "dark" sense of humor and laugh at the pain of others?
Nothing, to anyone who can construct a Venn diagram.
All people who have had their arms amputated struggle with tying their shoes.
Consequently, if someone has trouble tying their shoes, we know they must have had both arms amputated.
Ann and tradguy are way off their usual game.
Dark humor isn't necessarily about laughing at the pain of others. It's more about laughing at the macabre. The darkness in the humor of Dr Strangelove, for example, is in the farcical conduct of people bringing the country to the brink of thermonuclear war.
"The darkness in the humor of Dr Strangelove, for example, is in the farcical conduct of people bringing the country to the brink of thermonuclear war."
Yes and we laugh at Obama and Kerry for the same reason. Nothing new under the sun.
Speaking of dark humor, the third season of "Getting On" started this week on HBO.
Now, there's a good example of "dark humor" and "laughing at the pain of others" where it's not necessarily one and the same, nor simply outwardly directed.
The theme of certain, eventual death -- and more importantly, what we value and do with the time we have before each of us has to face it -- overhangs everything in the show.
Thus, the humor is dark, and necessarily entails humor amidst "the pain of others." That pain is not only sickness, old age and death, but human frailty and the loss of hopes and dreams in the crushing banality of life "in the system"-- even the pettiness and meanness that that can engender.
Yet it does so hilariously, with tremendous empathy in the knowledge that it's a shared misery that we can only hope to minimize or forestall but never entirely escape.
I love that show!
"'@Ann:What does this say about people who begin with a "dark" sense of humor and laugh at the pain of others?' Nothing, to anyone who can construct a Venn diagram."
You're not thinking of all possible Venn diagrams.
Try beginning with a circle that represents abnormal brains.
"Try beginning with a circle that represents abnormal brains."
Physically abnormal brains or psychologically abnormal brains?
Or are we already at two overlapping circles?
I am Laslo.
"What does this say about people who begin with a "dark" sense of humor and laugh at the pain of others?"
Jeb Bush had to answer a similar question this weekend ("if you could go back in time and kill baby Hitler would you?"}.
Dementia in feminists shows up when they develop any sense of humor.
@Ann:You're not thinking of all possible Venn diagrams.
Try beginning with a circle that represents abnormal brains.
You're not improving your position here. I am thinking of all possible Venn diagrams. When you add them up, you have learned nothing from this article about those who enjoy "dark humor" except that they either have, or have not, had brain damage.
Because all the article says is that some of those who had brain damage through dementia developed a darker sense of humor. It says nothing about the relative prevalence of darker humor among those who did not have brain damage through dementia. The article has taught us something about dementia, but nothing about dark humor.
And this is elementary logic.
Futhermore much of what is called "dark" humor is satirical and the article says the dementia patients also tended to lose their sense of that.
That's before we get to the fact that the study was 48 patients.
And from those 48 we're supposed to draw conclusions about the hundreds of millions who enjoy "dark" humor?
That's an empirical fail as well as a logical one.
So if I like the Stooges, I'm demented?
I'm wondering then if social justice warriors are on the verge of dementia.
Seems to me that many Americas Funniest videos are of someone falling or being struck in a way that could have been disastrous.
And, many G rated movies have some male struck in the groin.
What does this say about people who begin with a "dark" sense of humor and laugh at the pain of others?
I would say that it doesn't say anything; say is much too strong a word here.
It may be worthwhile for someone to investigate if people with a "dark" sense of humor have some similarity in brain structure/chemistry/??? with people who develop dementia, if they develop dementia at the same/greater/lesser rates as others, etc.
Maybe Drudge was onto something with Hillary, after her laughing incident this week at the thought of Fiorina getting choked by that man.
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