Schaefer Michael, Denke Claudia, Heinze Hans-Jochen, Rotte Michael
Department of Neurology, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany and Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Department of Neurology, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany and Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2014 Nov;9(11):1653-9. doi: 10.1093/scan/nst163. Epub 2013 Oct 4.
How does our brain organize knowledge? Traditional theories assume that our knowledge is represented abstractly in an amodal conceptual network of formal logic symbols. The theory of embodied cognition challenges this view and argues that conceptual representations that constitute our knowledge are grounded in sensory and motor experiences. We tested this hypothesis by examining how the concept of social coordination is grounded metaphorically in the tactile sensation of roughness. Participants experienced rough or smooth touch before being asked to judge an ambiguous social interaction. Results revealed that rough touch made social interactions appear more difficult and adversarial, consistent with the rough metaphor. This impact of tactile cues on social impressions was accompanied by a network including primary and secondary somatosensory cortices, amygdala, hippocampus and inferior prefrontal cortex. Thus, the roughness of tactile stimulation affected metaphor-relevant (but not metaphor-irrelevant) behavioral and neural responses. Receiving touch from a rough object seems to trigger the application of associated ontological concepts (or scaffolds) even for unrelated people and situations (but not to unrelated or more general feelings). Since this priming was based on somatosensory brain areas, our results provide support for the theory that sensorimotor grounding is intrinsic to cognitive processes.
我们的大脑是如何组织知识的？传统理论认为，我们的知识以形式逻辑符号的无模态概念网络抽象地表示。具身认知理论对这一观点提出了挑战，并认为构成我们知识的概念表征基于感官和运动体验。我们通过研究社会协调概念如何隐喻地基于粗糙的触觉感受来检验这一假设。参与者在被要求判断一个模棱两可的社会互动之前，先体验了粗糙或光滑的触摸。结果显示，粗糙的触摸使社会互动显得更加困难和充满对抗性，这与粗糙隐喻一致。触觉线索对社会印象的这种影响伴随着一个包括初级和次级体感皮层、杏仁核、海马体和前额叶下回的网络。因此，触觉刺激的粗糙度影响了与隐喻相关（但与隐喻无关）的行为和神经反应。即使对于不相关的人和情况（但不是不相关或更一般的感觉），从粗糙物体接收触摸似乎也会触发相关本体概念（或支架）的应用。由于这种启动基于体感脑区，我们的结果为感觉运动基础是认知过程所固有的这一理论提供了支持。
