Functional-anatomical organization of predicate metaphor processing.

Full Abstract

The bulk of the research on the neural organization of metaphor comprehension has focused on nominal metaphors and the metaphoric relationships between word pairs. By contrast, little work has been conducted on predicate metaphors using verbs of motion such as "The man fell under her spell." We examined predicate metaphors as compared to literal sentences of motion such as "The child fell under the slide" in an event-related, functional MRI study. Our results demonstrated greater activation in the left inferior frontal cortex and left lateral temporal lobe for predicate metaphors as compared to literal sentences, while no differences were seen in homologous areas of the right hemisphere. We suggest that the results support a neural organization principle for motion processing in which greater abstraction proceeds along a posterior-to-anterior axis within the lateral portion of the left temporal cortex.

Author information

Author/s: Chen, Evan (E); Widick, Page (P); Chatterjee, Anjan (A);

Affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania, 3 W Gates Building, 3400 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Randomized Controlled Trial

Journal: Brain and language (Brain Lang), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-Dec; vol 107 (issue 3) : pp 194-202

Dates: Created 2008/11/17; Completed 2008/12/29; Revised 2009/02/11;

PMID: 18692890, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

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