The Neural Career of Sensory-motor Metaphors

Rutvik H. Desai · Jeffrey R. Binder · Lisa L. Conant · Quintino R. Mano · Mark S. Seidenberg

351 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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Language, Metaphor, and Cognition Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism Action Observation and Synchronization

Abstract

The role of sensory-motor systems in conceptual understanding has been controversial. It has been proposed that many abstract concepts are understood metaphorically through concrete sensory-motor domains such as actions. Using fMRI, we compared neural responses with literal action (Lit; The daughter grasped the flowers), metaphoric action (Met; The public grasped the idea), and abstract (Abs; The public understood the idea) sentences of varying familiarity. Both Lit and Met sentences activated the left anterior inferior parietal lobule, an area involved in action planning, with Met sentences also activating a homologous area in the right hemisphere, relative to Abs sentences. Both Met and Abs sentences activated the left superior temporal regions associated with abstract language. Importantly, activation in primary motor and biological motion perception regions was inversely correlated with Lit and Met familiarity. These results support the view that the understanding of metaphoric action retains a link to sensory-motor systems involved in action performance. However, the involvement of sensory-motor systems in metaphor understanding changes through a gradual abstraction process whereby relatively detailed simulations are used for understanding unfamiliar metaphors, and these simulations become less detailed and involve only secondary motor regions as familiarity increases. Consistent with these data, we propose that anterior inferior parietal lobule serves as an interface between sensory-motor and conceptual systems and plays an important role in both domains. The similarity of abstract and metaphoric sentences in the activation of left superior temporal regions suggests that action metaphor understanding is not completely based on sensory-motor simulations but relies also on abstract lexical-semantic codes.

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References

2003Metaphors We Live By 1986Mental Representations: A Dual Coding Approach 2005Brain mechanisms linking language and action 2006The Representation of Object Concepts in the Brain 2005The Career of Metaphor.2008Embodied Language: A Review of the Role of the Motor System in Language Comprehension 1997Brain activity during observation of actions. Influence of action content and subject's strategy 2001Understanding Figurative Language

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2015Situation models, mental simulations, and abstract concepts in discourse comprehension 2014Mapping the brain's metaphor circuitry: metaphorical thought in everyday reason 2012Metaphorically feeling: Comprehending textural metaphors activates somatosensory cortex 2011Structure-Mapping in Metaphor Comprehension 2011Decomposing metaphor processing at the cognitive and neural level through functional magnetic resonance imaging 2011From novel to familiar: Tuning the brain for metaphors

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