neuroscientists have identified the area of the brain that is the key to picking up on when someone is being sarcastic .
they found that people with damage to the right sagittal stratum - a bundle of white matter that lies between the cerebral cortex and subcortical structures in the brain - are unable to detect sarcasm .
stroke patients with damage in the sagittal stratum in the right hemisphere of the brain -lrb- shown in the image above -rrb- were far poorer at detecting sarcasm when listening to sentences .