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Humor elicits feelings of amusement and can be thought of as a social reward. We identified distinct mesolimbic reward system (MRS) processing patterns for monetary and humorous rewards. During both the reward anticipation and outcome phases, the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) were active in response to monetary cues and monetary gains, while the amygdala and midbrain showed a differential response to humorous rewards, apparently driven by the hedonic enjoyment and appreciation of humor consumption. Psychophysiological interaction analysis (PPI) further demonstrated the functional coupling of the amygdala-midbrain circuit in response to humorous gains during the reward outcome phase, while neural signaling was observed in the NAc-ACC circuit during both the reward anticipation and outcome phases in response to monetary rewards. This is consistent with a view in which the NAc plays a key role in the ‘motivation brain’, and the amygdala in the ‘hedonic brain’. The findings further suggest that the neural mechanisms underlying reward consumption are more modality-specific than those underlying reward anticipation. Our study contributes to a growing understanding of neural responses to social rewards and represent an important first step toward understanding the neural processing of humor as one significant type of social reward.

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Consensus of creativity research suggests that the measurement of both originality and valuableness is necessary when designing creativity tasks. However, few studies have emphasized valuableness when exploring underlying neural substrates of creative thinking. The present study employs product-based creativity tasks that measure both originality and valuableness in an exploration of the dynamic relationship between the default mode (DMN), executive control (ECN), and salience (SN) networks through time windows. This methodology highlights relevance, or valuableness, in creativity evaluation as opposed to divergent thinking tasks solely measuring originality. The researchers identified seven brain regions belonging to the ECN, DMN, and SN as regions of interest (ROIs), as well as four representative seeds to analyze functional connectivity in 25 college student participants. Results showed that all of the identified ROIs were involved during the creative task. The insula, precuneus, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) remained active across all stages of product-based creative thinking. Moreover, the connectivity analyses revealed varied interaction patterns of DMN, ECN, and SN at different thinking stages. The integrated findings of the whole brain, ROI, and connectivity analyses suggest a trend that the DMN and SN (which relate to bottom-up thinking) attenuate as time proceeds, whereas the vlPFC (which relates to top-down thinking) gets stronger at later stages; these findings reflect the nature of our creativity tasks and decision-making of valuableness in later stages. Based on brain region activation throughout execution of the task, we propose that product-based creative process may include three stages: exploration and association, incubation and insight, and finally, evaluation and decision making. This model provides a thinking frame for further research and classroom instruction.