Pomp Jennifer, Bestgen Anne-Kathrin, Schulze Patrick, Müller Christina J, Citron Francesca M M, Suchan Boris, Kuchinke Lars
Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr-University Bochum, Universitätsstrasse 150, 44801 Bochum, Germany; Institute of Psychology, University of Münster, Fliednerstrasse 21, 48149 Münster, Germany.
Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr-University Bochum, Universitätsstrasse 150, 44801 Bochum, Germany.
Brain Lang. 2018 Apr;179:11-21. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2018.02.001. Epub 2018 Feb 23.
The investigation of specific lexical categories has substantially contributed to advancing our knowledge on how meaning is neurally represented. One sensory domain that has received particularly little attention is olfaction. This study aims to investigate the neural representation of lexical olfaction. In an fMRI experiment, participants read olfactory metaphors, their literal paraphrases, and literal olfactory sentences. Regions of interest were defined by a functional localizer run of odor processing. We observed activation in secondary olfactory areas during metaphorical and literal olfactory processing, thus extending previous findings to the novel source domain of olfaction. Previously reported enhanced activation in emotion-related areas due to metaphoricity could not be replicated. Finally, no primary olfactory cortex was found active during lexical olfaction processing. We suggest that this absence is due to olfactory hedonicity being crucial to understand the meaning of the current olfactory expressions. Consequently, the processing of olfactory hedonicity recruits secondary olfactory areas.
对特定词汇类别的研究极大地推动了我们对意义在神经层面如何表征的认识。一个特别受关注较少的感觉领域是嗅觉。本研究旨在探究词汇嗅觉的神经表征。在一项功能磁共振成像（fMRI）实验中，参与者阅读嗅觉隐喻、其字面释义以及字面嗅觉句子。感兴趣区域通过气味处理的功能定位运行来定义。我们在隐喻性和字面嗅觉处理过程中观察到二级嗅觉区域的激活，从而将先前的研究结果扩展到嗅觉这个新的源领域。先前报道的由于隐喻性而在情绪相关区域增强的激活无法被复制。最后，在词汇嗅觉处理过程中未发现初级嗅觉皮层活跃。我们认为这种缺失是由于嗅觉享乐性对于理解当前嗅觉表达的意义至关重要。因此，嗅觉享乐性的处理会调用二级嗅觉区域。
