Functional–anatomical organization of predicate metaphor processing

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.

[1]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Analysis of fMRI Time-Series Revisited—Again , 1995, NeuroImage.

[2]  H. Gardner,et al.  Connotative judgements by aphasic patients on a pictorial adaptation of the semantic differential. , 1973, Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior.

[3]  C. Burgess,et al.  Neurocognitive Mechanisms Underlying Metaphor Comprehension and Other Figurative Language , 1996 .

[4]  J. Pynte,et al.  The Time-Course of Metaphor Comprehension: An Event-Related Potential Study , 1996, Brain and Language.

[5]  Justin C. Hulbert,et al.  Understanding words in context: The role of Broca's area in word comprehension , 2007, Brain Research.

[6]  R. Poldrack,et al.  Dissociable Controlled Retrieval and Generalized Selection Mechanisms in Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex , 2005, Neuron.

[7]  Y. Hsu,et al.  Functional MRI of conventional and anomalous metaphors in Mandarin Chinese , 2007, Brain and Language.

[8]  Richard S. J. Frackowiak,et al.  Area V5 of the human brain: evidence from a combined study using positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. , 1993, Cerebral cortex.

[9]  D. Perrett,et al.  Responses of Anterior Superior Temporal Polysensory (STPa) Neurons to Biological Motion Stimuli , 1994, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[10]  C. Mackenzie,et al.  The effects on verbal communication skills of right hemishere stroke in middle age , 1997 .

[11]  S. Molholm,et al.  Novel Metaphors Appear Anomalous at Least Momentarily: Evidence from N400 , 2002, Brain and Language.

[12]  Anjan Chatterjee,et al.  Specificity of Action Representations in the Lateral Occipitotemporal Cortex , 2006, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[13]  Ray Jackendoff,et al.  Languages of the Mind: Essays on Mental Representation , 1992 .

[14]  K. Holyoak,et al.  The analogical mind. , 1997, The American psychologist.

[15]  Bradford Z. Mahon,et al.  CONSTRAINING QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ORGANISATION AND REPRESENTATION OF CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE , 2003, Cognitive neuropsychology.

[16]  Rachel Giora,et al.  On the priority of salient meanings: Studies of literal and figurative language , 1999 .

[17]  L. Pizzamiglio,et al.  When space merges into language , 2006, Neuropsychologia.

[18]  R. Adolphs,et al.  NEURAL CORRELATES OF CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE FOR ACTIONS , 2003, Cognitive neuropsychology.

[19]  A. Roepstorff,et al.  Concrete spatial language: See what I mean? , 2005, Brain and Language.

[20]  D. Tranel,et al.  Neuroanatomical correlates of locative prepositions , 2004, Cognitive neuropsychology.

[21]  Leslie G. Ungerleider,et al.  Discrete Cortical Regions Associated with Knowledge of Color and Knowledge of Action , 1995, Science.

[22]  S. Glucksberg.  The psycholinguistics of metaphor , 2003, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[23]  A. Damasio,et al.  Nouns and verbs are retrieved with differently distributed neural systems. , 1993, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[24]  M. Farah,et al.  Role of left inferior prefrontal cortex in retrieval of semantic knowledge: a reevaluation. , 1997, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[25]  J. Kable,et al.  Neural Substrates of Action Event Knowledge , 2002, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[26]  Beth Levin,et al.  Argument Realization , 2005 .

[27]  H. Gardner,et al.  The comprehension of metaphor in brain-damaged patients. , 1977, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[28]  S. Cappa,et al.  Object and action naming in Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia , 1998, Neurology.

[29]  J. Gee,et al.  Neural representation of verb meaning: An fMRI study , 2002, Human brain mapping.

[30]  Richard S. J. Frackowiak,et al.  The role of the right hemisphere in the interpretation of figurative aspects of language. A positron emission tomography activation study. , 1994, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[31]  Van Valin,et al.  Some universals of verb semantics , 2006 .

[32]  Brian F. Bowdle,et al.  Metaphor is like analogy , 2001 .

[33]  T. Hendler,et al.  The role of the right hemisphere in processing nonsalient metaphorical meanings: Application of Principal Components Analysis to fMRI data , 2005, Neuropsychologia.

[34]  Anjan Chatterjee,et al.  The Functional Neuroanatomy of Thematic Role and Locative Relational Knowledge , 2007, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[35]  Michael W. L. Chee,et al.  Frequency of Concrete Words Modulates Prefrontal Activation during Semantic Judgments , 2002, NeuroImage.

[36]  Sharon L. Thompson-Schill,et al.  Conceptual Representations of Action in the Lateral Temporal Cortex , 2005, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[37]  C. Mackenzie,et al.  Communication ability in non-right handers following right hemisphere stroke , 2004, Journal of Neurolinguistics.

[38]  R. Andersen,et al.  Functional analysis of human MT and related visual cortical areas using magnetic resonance imaging , 1995, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[39]  K. Bryan.  The Right Hemisphere Language Battery , 1995 .

[40]  Richard S. J. Frackowiak,et al.  Noun and verb retrieval by normal subjects. Studies with PET. , 1996, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[41]  Alex Martin,et al.  NEURAL FOUNDATIONS FOR UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL AND MECHANICAL CONCEPTS , 2003, Cognitive neuropsychology.

[42]  S. Levinson,et al.  LANGUAGE AND SPACE , 1996 .

[43]  H. Kucera,et al.  Computational analysis of present-day American English , 1967 .

[44]  Michael Erb,et al.  Laterality in metaphor processing: Lack of evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging for the right hemisphere theory , 2007, Brain and Language.

[45]  A. Roepstorff,et al.  Motion verb sentences activate left posterior middle temporal cortex despite static context , 2005, Neuroreport.

[46]  Mark Beeman,et al.  Coarse semantic coding and discourse comprehension. , 1998 .

[47]  C. Tompkins.  Knowledge and strategies for processing lexical metaphor after right or left hemisphere brain damage. , 1990, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[48]  M. Erb,et al.  Neural correlates of metaphor processing. , 2004, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[49]  Rolf A. Zwaan,et al.  PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article THE EFFECT OF IMPLIED ORIENTATION DERIVED FROM VERBAL CONTEXT ON PICTURE RECOGNITION , 2022 .

[50]  Carol A. Seger,et al.  Right hemisphere metaphor processing? Characterizing the lateralization of semantic processes , 2007, Brain and Language.

[51]  Asa Kasher,et al.  Differential Effects of Right- and Left-Hemisphere Damage on Understanding Sarcasm and Metaphor , 2000 .

[52]  Howard Gardner,et al.  Sensitivity to lexical denotation and connotation in brain-damaged patients: A double dissociation? , 1984, Brain and Language.

[53]  Jonathan D. Cohen,et al.  Improved Assessment of Significant Activation in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI): Use of a Cluster‐Size Threshold , 1995, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[54]  M. Just,et al.  Brain correlates of discourse processing: An fMRI investigation of irony and conventional metaphor comprehension , 2006, Neuropsychologia.

[55]  B. Bertenthal,et al.  Does Perception of Biological Motion Rely on Specific Brain Regions? , 2001, NeuroImage.

[56]  T. Shallice,et al.  “Sculpting the Response Space”—An Account of Left Prefrontal Activation at Encoding , 2000, NeuroImage.

[57]  B. Landau,et al.  “What” and “where” in spatial language and spatial cognition , 1993 .

[58]  R. Berndt,et al.  Retrieval of nouns and verbs in agrammatism and anomia , 1990, Brain and Language.

[59]  Brian F. Bowdle,et al.  Convention, Form, and Figurative Language Processing , 2001 .

[60]  M. D’Esposito,et al.  The Variability of Human, BOLD Hemodynamic Responses , 1998, NeuroImage.

[61]  E. DeYoe,et al.  Graded effects of spatial and featural attention on human area MT and associated motion processing areas. , 1997, Journal of neurophysiology.

[62]  Sergio E. Chaigneau,et al.  THE SIMILARITY-IN-TOPOGRAPHY PRINCIPLE: RECONCILING THEORIES OF CONCEPTUAL DEFICITS , 2003, Cognitive neuropsychology.

[63]  Irene P. Kan,et al.  Effects of Repetition and Competition on Activity in Left Prefrontal Cortex during Word Generation , 1999, Neuron.

[64]  P. Fletcher,et al.  Selecting among competing alternatives: selection and retrieval in the left inferior frontal gyrus. , 2005, Cerebral cortex.

[65]  N. Tzourio-Mazoyer,et al.  Automated Anatomical Labeling of Activations in SPM Using a Macroscopic Anatomical Parcellation of the MNI MRI Single-Subject Brain , 2002, NeuroImage.

[66]  C. Petten,et al.  Conceptual integration and metaphor: An event-related potential study , 2002, Memory & cognition.

[67]  D. Perani,et al.  The neural correlates of verb and noun processing. A PET study. , 1999, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[68]  A. Damasio,et al.  Neural Correlates of Naming Actions and of Naming Spatial Relations , 2001, NeuroImage.

[69]  M. Faust,et al.  Understanding metaphoric sentences in the two cerebral hemispheres. , 2000, Brain and cognition.

[70]  Howard Gardner,et al.  Appreciation of metaphoric alternative word meanings by left and right brain-damaged patients , 1990, Neuropsychologia.

[71]  T. Hendler,et al.  An fMRI investigation of the neural correlates underlying the processing of novel metaphoric expressions , 2007, Brain and Language.

[72]  M. D’Esposito,et al.  Empirical Analyses of BOLD fMRI Statistics , 1997, NeuroImage.

[73]  P. Marangolo,et al.  Metaphor Comprehension in Right Brain-Damaged Patients with Visuo-Verbal and Verbal Material: A Dissociation (RE)Considered , 2004, Cortex.

[74]  Michael J. Brammer,et al.  How metaphors influence semantic relatedness judgments: The role of the right frontal cortex , 2006, NeuroImage.

[75]  S. Pinker.  Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure , 1989 .

[76]  Julie C. Sedivy,et al.  Subject Terms: Linguistics Language Eyes & eyesight Cognition & reasoning , 1995 .

[77]  L. Talmy.  Toward a Cognitive Semantics , 2003 .

[78]  C. Lombroso,et al.  Left and Right Temporal Lobe Epileptics: A Controlled Investigation of Some Psychological Differences , 1976, Epilepsia.