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Researchers have used functional MRI (fMRI) to examine circuits activated by money or by humor, but until now money-activated circuits and humor-activated circuits have not been compared within one investigation. In this Taiwanese study examining both types of stimuli, 38 participants (mean age, 23; 19 women) underwent fMRI in six conditions: anticipation of monetary reward (stimulus = money images); reward = receipt of money; anticipation of humorous reward (stimulus = caption-less cartoons); reward = joke; no anticipation of reward (stimulus = images of scrambled items); and no reward provided. To obtain money or humor rewards, participants needed to get a sufficiently high score on a test of recall (the 2 n-back task, which involves reca…