Department of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19143, USA.
Neuroimage. 2012 Feb 15;59(4):3212-21. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.11.079. Epub 2011 Dec 4.
Metaphors are fundamental to creative thought and expression. Newly coined metaphors regularly infiltrate our collective vocabulary and gradually become familiar, but it is unclear how this shift from novel to conventionalized meaning happens in the brain. We investigated the neural career of metaphors in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study using extensively normed new metaphors and simulated the ordinary, gradual experience of metaphor conventionalization by manipulating participants' exposure to these metaphors. Results showed that the conventionalization of novel metaphors specifically tunes activity within bilateral inferior prefrontal cortex, left posterior middle temporal gyrus, and right postero-lateral occipital cortex. These results support theoretical accounts attributing a role for the right hemisphere in processing novel, low salience figurative meanings, but also show that conventionalization of metaphoric meaning is a bilaterally-mediated process. Metaphor conventionalization entails a decreased neural load within semantic networks rather than a hemispheric or regional shift across brain areas.
隐喻是创造性思维和表达的基础。新创造的隐喻经常渗透到我们的集体词汇中，并逐渐变得熟悉，但尚不清楚这种从新颖到常规意义的转变是如何在大脑中发生的。我们使用经过广泛规范的新隐喻在功能磁共振成像研究中研究了隐喻的神经轨迹，并通过操纵参与者对这些隐喻的接触来模拟隐喻常规化的普通、渐进体验。结果表明，新颖隐喻的常规化特别调节了双侧下前额叶皮质、左后颞中回和右后外侧枕叶皮质内的活动。这些结果支持了将右半球在处理新颖、低显著性比喻意义中的作用归因于理论解释，但也表明隐喻意义的常规化是一个双侧介导的过程。隐喻常规化需要语义网络内的神经负荷降低，而不是跨大脑区域的半球或区域转移。
