Following a neurological illness, a patient bursts into sudden, uncontrollable laughter or tears at minor or even neutral remarks, with the intensity and nature of the display markedly disconnected from how she actually reports feeling at the time, and she cannot bring the display under control once it begins. Before revealing the answer: is this irritability?

No, this is more consistent with affective incontinence than with irritability. The defining feature here is a genuine loss of voluntary control over the emotional display, sudden laughing or crying markedly disconnected from her actual inner feeling, which goes beyond the persistently lowered anger threshold, with retained control, that defines irritability. Its occurrence following a neurological illness also fits affective incontinence's strong association with organic and neurological causes.