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Xu X, Zhang J, Wang Y, Jiang M. An ERP study on the late stage of Chinese metaphor processing. Front Hum Neurosci 2024; 18:1269153. [PMID: 38911227 PMCID: PMC11190191 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2024.1269153] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/29/2023] [Accepted: 02/29/2024] [Indexed: 06/25/2024] Open
Abstract
Psycholinguistic models of metaphor processing remain a subject of debate. A prime-probe design using Chinese materials with a specific time span (300 ms) was applied to test the mechanisms of metaphor processing. Conventional and familiarized metaphors were designed as primes, followed by a probe word semantically related to the prime metaphor (MT), a probe word related to the literal meaning of the final word of the prime metaphor (LT), control/unrelated probe word (UT), or non-word. Event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by the probes were recorded to examine metaphor processing. In N400, results revealed that UT and LT elicited significantly more negative waveforms than MT in both primes. MTs and LTs showed no difference between conventional and familiarized metaphors, suggesting that metaphorical meaning may be accessed directly, regardless of whether conventional or familiarized metaphors. The results were generally compatible with the direct processing model.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xinyi Xu
- Center for Psychology and Cognitive Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
| | - Jingting Zhang
- Center for Psychology and Cognitive Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
- College of National Culture and Cognitive Science, Guizhou Minzu University, Guiyang, China
| | - Yuling Wang
- Artificial Intelligence and Human Language Lab, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing, China
| | - Minghu Jiang
- Center for Psychology and Cognitive Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
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2
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Huang Y, Huang J, Li L, Lin T, Zou L. Neural network of metaphor comprehension: an ALE meta-analysis and MACM analysis. Cereb Cortex 2023; 33:10918-10930. [PMID: 37718244 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhad337] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/08/2023] [Revised: 08/25/2023] [Accepted: 08/26/2023] [Indexed: 09/19/2023] Open
Abstract
The comprehension of metaphor, a vivid and figurative language, is a complex endeavor requiring cooperation among multiple cognitive systems. There are still many important questions regarding neural mechanisms implicated in specific types of metaphor. To address these questions, we conducted activation likelihood estimation meta-analyses on 30 studies (containing data of 480 participants) and meta-analytic connectivity modeling analyses. First, the results showed that metaphor comprehension engaged the inferior frontal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, fusiform gyrus, lingual gyrus, and middle occipital gyrus-all in the left hemisphere. In addition to the commonly reported networks of language and attention, metaphor comprehension engaged networks of visual. Second, sub-analysis showed that the contextual complexity can modulate figurativeness, with the convergence on the left fusiform gyrus during metaphor comprehension at discourse-level. Especially, right hemisphere only showed convergence in studies of novel metaphors, suggesting that the right hemisphere is more associated with difficulty than metaphorical. The work here extends knowledge of the neural mechanisms underlying metaphor comprehension in individual brain regions and neural networks.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yanyang Huang
- Department of Psychiatry, Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510280, China
- Chemical Senses and Mental Health Lab, Department of Psychology, School of Public Health, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510515, China
| | - Jiayu Huang
- Department of Psychiatry, Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510280, China
- Chemical Senses and Mental Health Lab, Department of Psychology, School of Public Health, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510515, China
| | - Le Li
- Center for the Cognitive Science of Language, Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, 100083, China
| | - Tao Lin
- Department of Psychiatry, Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510280, China
- Chemical Senses and Mental Health Lab, Department of Psychology, School of Public Health, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510515, China
| | - Laiquan Zou
- Department of Psychiatry, Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510280, China
- Chemical Senses and Mental Health Lab, Department of Psychology, School of Public Health, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510515, China
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3
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Gao F, Hua L, Armada-da-Silva P, Zhang J, Li D, Chen Z, Wang C, Du M, Yuan Z. Shared and distinct neural correlates of first and second language morphological processing in bilingual brain. NPJ SCIENCE OF LEARNING 2023; 8:33. [PMID: 37666860 PMCID: PMC10477180 DOI: 10.1038/s41539-023-00184-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/11/2022] [Accepted: 08/21/2023] [Indexed: 09/06/2023]
Abstract
While morphology constitutes a crucial component of the human language system, the neural bases of morphological processing in the human brain remains to be elucidated. The current study aims at exploring the extent to which the second language (L2) morphological processing would resemble or differ from that of their first language (L1) in adult Chinese-English bilinguals. Bilingual participants were asked to complete a morphological priming lexical decision task drawing on derivational morphology, which is present for both Chinese and English, when their electrophysiological and optical responses were recorded concurrently. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) revealed a neural dissociation between morphological and semantic priming effects in the left fronto-temporal network, while L1 Chinese engaged enhanced activation in the left prefrontal cortex for morphological parsing relative to L2 English. In the early stage of lexical processing, cross-language morphological processing manifested a difference in degree, not in kind, as revealed by the early left anterior negativity (ELAN) effect. In addition, L1 and L2 shared both early and late structural parsing processes (P250 and 300 ~ 500 ms negativity, respectively). Therefore, the current results support a unified competition model for bilingual development, where bilinguals would primarily employ L1 neural resources for L2 morphological representation and processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fei Gao
- Centre for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
- Institute of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Lin Hua
- Centre for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
- Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
| | - Paulo Armada-da-Silva
- Centre for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
- Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
| | - Juan Zhang
- Centre for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
- Faculty of Education, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
| | - Defeng Li
- Centre for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
- Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
| | - Zhiyi Chen
- The Affiliated Changsha Central Hospital, Hengyang Medical School, University of South China, Changsha, China
- Institute of Medical Imaging, Hengyang Medical School, University of South China, Hengyang, China
- The Seven Affiliated Hospital, Hengyang Medical School, University of South China, Changsha, China
| | - Chengwen Wang
- School of International Cultural Exchange, University of Finance and Economics, Central, Beijing, China
| | - Meng Du
- The Affiliated Changsha Central Hospital, Hengyang Medical School, University of South China, Changsha, China
- Institute of Medical Imaging, Hengyang Medical School, University of South China, Hengyang, China
| | - Zhen Yuan
- Centre for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China.
- Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China.
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4
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Ntemou E, Rybka L, Lubbers J, Tuncer MS, Vajkoczy P, Rofes A, Picht T, Faust K. Lesion-symptom mapping of language impairments in people with brain tumours: The influence of linguistic stimuli. J Neuropsychol 2023; 17:400-416. [PMID: 36651346 DOI: 10.1111/jnp.12305] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/20/2022] [Revised: 12/18/2022] [Accepted: 12/22/2022] [Indexed: 01/19/2023]
Abstract
People with tumours in specific brain sites might face difficulties in tasks with different linguistic material. Previous lesion-symptom mapping studies (VLSM) demonstrated that people with tumours in posterior temporal regions have more severe linguistic impairments. However, to the best of our knowledge, preoperative performance and lesion location on tasks with different linguistic stimuli have not been examined. In the present study, we performed VLSM on 52 people with left gliomas to examine whether tumour distribution differs depending on the tasks of the Aachen Aphasia Test. The VLSM analysis revealed that single-word production (e.g. object naming) was associated with the inferior parietal lobe and that compound and sentence production were additionally associated with posterior temporal gyri. Word repetition was affected in people with tumours in inferior parietal areas, whereas sentence repetition was the only task to be associated with frontal regions. Subcortically, word and sentence production were found to be affected in people with tumours reaching the arcuate fasciculus, and compound production was primarily associated with tumours affecting the inferior longitudinal and inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus. Our work shows that tasks with linguistic stimuli other than single-word naming (e.g. compound and sentence production) relate to additional cortical and subcortical brain areas. At a clinical level, we show that tasks that target the same processes (e.g. repetition) can have different neural correlates depending on the linguistic stimuli used. Also, we highlight the importance of left temporoparietal areas.
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Affiliation(s)
- Effrosyni Ntemou
- International Doctorate for Approaches to Language and Brain (IDEALAB), University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
- International Doctorate for Approaches to Language and Brain (IDEALAB), University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
- International Doctorate for Approaches to Language and Brain (IDEALAB), Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
- International Doctorate for Approaches to Language and Brain (IDEALAB), Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Centre for Language and Cognition Groningen (CLCG), University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
- Department of Neurosurgery, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Lena Rybka
- Centre for Language and Cognition Groningen (CLCG), University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
- Department of Neurosurgery, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Jocelyn Lubbers
- Centre for Language and Cognition Groningen (CLCG), University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
- Department of Neurosurgery, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Mehmet Salih Tuncer
- Department of Neurosurgery, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Peter Vajkoczy
- Department of Neurosurgery, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Adrià Rofes
- Centre for Language and Cognition Groningen (CLCG), University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
| | - Thomas Picht
- Department of Neurosurgery, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- Cluster of Excellence: "Matters of Activity. Image Space Material", Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany
| | - Katharina Faust
- Department of Neurosurgery, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
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5
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Huang B, Yang X, Dong S, Gu F. Visual event-related potentials reveal the early whole-word lexical processing of Chinese two-character words. Neuropsychologia 2023; 185:108571. [PMID: 37119984 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108571] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/04/2022] [Revised: 04/25/2023] [Accepted: 04/26/2023] [Indexed: 05/01/2023]
Abstract
Morphologically complex words are common across different languages, especially in Chinese, because more than 90% of common modern Chinese words are complex words. Many behavioral studies have suggested the whole-word processing of Chinese complex words, but the neural correlates of whole-word processing remain unclear. Previous electrophysiological studies revealed automatic and early (∼250 ms) access to the orthographic forms of monomorphic words in the ventral occipitotemporal area. In this study, we investigated whether there is also automatic and early orthographic recognition of Chinese complex words (as whole units) by recording event-related potentials (ERPs). A total of 150 two-character words and 150 two-character pseudowords composed of the same 300 characters (morphemes) were pseudorandomly presented to proficient Chinese readers. Participants were required to determine the color of each stimulus in the color decision task and to determine whether each stimulus was a word in the lexical decision task. The two constituent characters of each stimulus were horizontally arranged in Experiment 1 and vertically arranged in Experiment 2. The results revealed a significant early ERP difference between words and pseudowords approximately 250-300 ms after stimulus onset in the parieto-occipital scalp region. The early ERP difference was more prominent in the color decision task than in the lexical decision task, more prominent in Experiment 1 than in Experiment 2, and more prominent in the left parieto-occipital scalp region than in the right. Source analysis results showed that the early ERP difference originated from the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex. These results reflected early and automatic access to whole-word orthographic representations of Chinese complex words in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bo Huang
- Neurocognitive Laboratory for Linguistics and Semiotics, College of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610207, China
| | - Xueying Yang
- Neurocognitive Laboratory for Linguistics and Semiotics, College of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610207, China
| | - Shiwei Dong
- Neurocognitive Laboratory for Linguistics and Semiotics, College of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610207, China
| | - Feng Gu
- Neurocognitive Laboratory for Linguistics and Semiotics, College of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610207, China; Digital Convergence Laboratory of Chinese Cultural Inheritance and Global Communication, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610207, China.
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6
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Ding F, Sun Y, Wang X. The metaphor of self/environmental cleanliness in the case of moral concepts: an event-related potential study. JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2022. [DOI: 10.1080/20445911.2022.2104859] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/16/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Fengqin Ding
- Department of Psychology, School of Education, Ningxia University, Yinchuan, People’s Republic of China
| | - Yishu Sun
- Department of Psychology, School of Education, Ningxia University, Yinchuan, People’s Republic of China
| | - Xiaofang Wang
- Department of Psychology, School of Education, Ningxia University, Yinchuan, People’s Republic of China
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7
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Doricchi F, Lasaponara S, Pazzaglia M, Silvetti M. Left and right temporal-parietal junctions (TPJs) as "match/mismatch" hedonic machines: A unifying account of TPJ function. Phys Life Rev 2022; 42:56-92. [PMID: 35901654 DOI: 10.1016/j.plrev.2022.07.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/29/2022] [Accepted: 07/06/2022] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
Abstract
Experimental and theoretical studies have tried to gain insights into the involvement of the Temporal Parietal Junction (TPJ) in a broad range of cognitive functions like memory, attention, language, self-agency and theory of mind. Recent investigations have demonstrated the partition of the TPJ in discrete subsectors. Nonetheless, whether these subsectors play different roles or implement an overarching function remains debated. Here, based on a review of available evidence, we propose that the left TPJ codes both matches and mismatches between expected and actual sensory, motor, or cognitive events while the right TPJ codes mismatches. These operations help keeping track of statistical contingencies in personal, environmental, and conceptual space. We show that this hypothesis can account for the participation of the TPJ in disparate cognitive functions, including "humour", and explain: a) the higher incidence of spatial neglect in right brain damage; b) the different emotional reactions that follow left and right brain damage; c) the hemispheric lateralisation of optimistic bias mechanisms; d) the lateralisation of mechanisms that regulate routine and novelty behaviours. We propose that match and mismatch operations are aimed at approximating "free energy", in terms of the free energy principle of decision-making. By approximating "free energy", the match/mismatch TPJ system supports both information seeking to update one's own beliefs and the pleasure of being right in one's own' current choices. This renewed view of the TPJ has relevant clinical implications because the misfunctioning of TPJ-related "match" and "mismatch" circuits in unilateral brain damage can produce low-dimensional deficits of active-inference and predictive coding that can be associated with different neuropsychological disorders.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fabrizio Doricchi
- Dipartimento di Psicologia 39, Università degli Studi di Roma 'La Sapienza', Roma, Italy; Fondazione Santa Lucia IRCCS, Roma, Italy.
| | - Stefano Lasaponara
- Dipartimento di Psicologia 39, Università degli Studi di Roma 'La Sapienza', Roma, Italy; Fondazione Santa Lucia IRCCS, Roma, Italy
| | - Mariella Pazzaglia
- Dipartimento di Psicologia 39, Università degli Studi di Roma 'La Sapienza', Roma, Italy; Fondazione Santa Lucia IRCCS, Roma, Italy
| | - Massimo Silvetti
- Computational and Translational Neuroscience Lab (CTNLab), Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council (CNR), Rome, Italy
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8
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Acunzo DJ, Low DM, Fairhall SL. Deep neural networks reveal topic-level representations of sentences in medial prefrontal cortex, lateral anterior temporal lobe, precuneus, and angular gyrus. Neuroimage 2022; 251:119005. [PMID: 35176493 PMCID: PMC10184870 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/20/2021] [Revised: 02/11/2022] [Accepted: 02/13/2022] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
When reading a sentence, individual words can be combined to create more complex meaning. In this study, we sought to uncover brain regions that reflect the representation of the meaning of sentences at the topic level, as opposed to the meaning of their individual constituent words when considered irrespective of their context. Using fMRI, we recorded the neural activity of participants while reading sentences. We constructed a topic-level sentence representations using the final layer of a convolutional neural network (CNN) trained to classify Wikipedia sentences into broad semantic categories. This model was contrasted with word-level sentence representations constructed using the average of the word embeddings constituting the sentence. Using representational similarity analysis, we found that the medial prefrontal cortex, lateral anterior temporal lobe, precuneus, and angular gyrus more strongly represent sentence topic-level, compared to word-level, meaning, uncovering the important role of these semantic system regions in the representation of topic-level meaning. Results were comparable when sentence meaning was modelled with a multilayer perceptron that was not sensitive to word order within a sentence, suggesting that the learning objective, in the terms of the topic being modelled, is the critical factor in capturing these neural representational spaces.
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Affiliation(s)
- David J Acunzo
- CIMeC/University of Trento, Corso Bettini 31, Rovereto 38068, Italy
| | - Daniel M Low
- Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology, Harvard Medical School, United States; Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, MIT, United States
| | - Scott L Fairhall
- CIMeC/University of Trento, Corso Bettini 31, Rovereto 38068, Italy.
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9
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Neural differences in social and figurative language processing on the autism spectrum. Neuropsychologia 2022; 171:108240. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108240] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/02/2022] [Revised: 04/13/2022] [Accepted: 04/18/2022] [Indexed: 11/20/2022]
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10
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From words to phrases: neural basis of social event semantic composition. Brain Struct Funct 2022; 227:1683-1695. [PMID: 35184222 PMCID: PMC9098591 DOI: 10.1007/s00429-022-02465-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/16/2021] [Accepted: 01/25/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022]
Abstract
Events are typically composed of at least actions and entities. Both actions and entities have been shown to be represented by neural structures respecting domain organizations in the brain, including those of social/animate (face and body; person-directed action) versus inanimate (man-made object or tool; object-directed action) concepts. It is unclear whether the brain combines actions and entities into events in a (relative) domain-specific fashion or via domain-general mechanisms in regions that have been shown to support semantic and syntactic composition. We tested these hypotheses in a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment where two domains of verb-noun event phrases (social-person versus manipulation-artifact, e.g., “hug mother” versus “fold napkin”) and their component words were contrasted. We found a series of brain region supporting social-composition effects more strongly than the manipulation phrase composition—the bilateral inferior occipital gyrus (IOG), inferior temporal gyrus (ITG) and anterior temporal lobe (ATL)—which either showed stronger activation strength tested by univariate contrast, stronger content representation tested by representation similarity analysis, or stronger relationship between the neural activation patterns of phrases and synthesis (additive and multiplication) of the neural activity patterns of the word constituents. No regions were observed showing evidence of phrase composition for both domains or stronger effects of manipulation phrases. These findings highlight the roles of the visual cortex and ATL in social event compositions, suggesting a domain-preferring, rather than domain-general, mechanisms of verbal event composition.
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11
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Koller S, Müller N, Kauschke C. The Elephant in the Room: A Systematic Review of Stimulus Control in Neuro-Measurement Studies on Figurative Language Processing. Front Hum Neurosci 2022; 15:791374. [PMID: 35126074 PMCID: PMC8814624 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2021.791374] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/08/2021] [Accepted: 12/23/2021] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
The processing of metaphors and idioms has been the subject of neuroscientific research for several decades. However, results are often contradictory, which can be traced back to inconsistent terminology and stimulus control. In this systematic review of research methods, we analyse linguistic aspects of 116 research papers which used EEG, fMRI, PET, MEG, or NIRS to investigate the neural processing of the two figurative subtypes metaphor and idiom. We critically examine the theoretical foundations as well as stimulus control by performing a systematic literature synthesis according to the PRISMA guidelines. We explicitly do not analyse the findings of the studies but instead focus on four primary aspects: definitions of figurative language and its subtypes, linguistic theory behind the studies, control for factors influencing figurative language processing, and the relationship between theoretical and operational definitions. We found both a lack and a broad variety in existing definitions and operationalisation, especially in regard to familiarity and conventionality. We identify severe obstacles in the comparability and validation potential of the results of the papers in our review corpus. We propose the development of a consensus in fundamental terminology and more transparency in the reporting of stimulus design in the research on figurative language processing.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Nadine Müller
- Department of German Studies and Arts, Institute of German Linguistics, Philipps University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany
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12
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The evolution of combinatoriality and compositionality in hominid tool use: a comparative perspective. INT J PRIMATOL 2022. [DOI: 10.1007/s10764-021-00267-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/19/2022]
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13
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Examining the transition of novel information toward familiarity. Neuropsychologia 2021; 161:107993. [PMID: 34411595 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107993] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/25/2021] [Revised: 08/14/2021] [Accepted: 08/15/2021] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
Abstract
Throughout their lives, humans encounter multiple instances of new information that can be inconsistent with prior knowledge (novel). Over time, the once-novel information becomes integrated into their established knowledge base, shifting from novelty to familiarity. In this study, we investigated the processes by which the first steps of this transition take place. We hypothesized that the neural representations of initially novel items gradually change over the course of repeated presentations, expressing a shift toward familiarity. We further assumed that this shift could be traced by examining neural patterns using fMRI. In two experiments, while being scanned, participants read noun-adjective word pairs that were either consistent or inconsistent with their prior knowledge. Stimuli were repeated 3-6 times within the scans. Employing mass univariate and multivariate similarity analyses, we showed that the neural representations associated with the initial presentation of familiar versus novel objects differed in lateral frontal and temporal regions, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the medial temporal lobe. Importantly, the neural representations of novel stimuli gradually changed throughout repetitions until they became indistinguishable from their respective familiar items. We interpret these findings as indicating that an early phase of familiarization can be completed within a few repetitions. This initial familiarization can then serve as the prerequisite to the integration of novel items into existing knowledge. Future empirical and theoretical works can build on the current findings to develop a comprehensive model of the transition from novelty to familiarity.
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14
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Lee HJ, Cheng SK, Lee CY, Kuo WJ. The neural basis of compound word processing revealed by varying semantic transparency and morphemic neighborhood size. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2021; 221:104985. [PMID: 34280834 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2021.104985] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/08/2020] [Revised: 06/23/2021] [Accepted: 06/24/2021] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
This study investigated the neural basis of compound word processing by using fMRI and Chinese two-character compounds for lexical decision. Semantic transparency and morphemic neighborhood size were manipulated to augment the processing profile for measurement. The behavioral results disclosed a semantic transparency effect and its interaction with the neighborhood size, which supported existence of a mechanism for compound processing. The fMRI results located a neural substrate in the left inferior prefrontal cortex (BA 45) which reacted in an interactive manner to the two variables. While its activities were lower when their neighborhood size was larger for processing transparent compounds, its activities became higher when their neighborhood size was larger for processing opaque compounds. When scaling to a larger scope, the function of this mechanism fitted well with the theoretical account of unification function of the left inferior frontal cortex for language processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hsin-Ju Lee
- Physical Sciences Platform, Sunnybrook Research Institute, Toronto, Canada; Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
| | - Shih-Kuen Cheng
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, National Central University, Taoyuan, Taiwan
| | - Chia-Ying Lee
- Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
| | - Wen-Jui Kuo
- Institute of Neuroscience, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taipei, Taiwan; Brain Research Center, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taipei, Taiwan; Research Center for Brain, Mind, and Learning, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan.
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15
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Abstract
Compounds are morphologically complex words made of different linguistic parts. They are very prevalent in a number of languages such as French. Different psycholinguistic characteristics of compounds have been used in certain studies to investigate the mechanisms involved in compound processing (see Table 7). We provide psycholinguistic norms for a set of 506 French compound words. The words were normed on seven characteristics: lexeme meaning dominance, semantic transparency, sensory experience, conceptual familiarity, imageability, age of acquisition (AoA) and subjective frequency. Reliability measures were computed for the collected norms. Descriptive statistical analyses, and correlational and multiple regression analyses were performed. We also report some comparisons made between our normative data and certain norms obtained in other similar studies. The entire set of norms, which will be very useful to researchers investigating the processing of compounds, is available as Supplemental Material.
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16
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Zhou L, Ma J, Zhou X, Niu Y, Chabebe A, Xue C. Which is better for concept visualization? Shape or spirit similarity: Evidence from event-related potentials. Neurosci Lett 2021; 749:135755. [PMID: 33610671 DOI: 10.1016/j.neulet.2021.135755] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/12/2020] [Revised: 01/31/2021] [Accepted: 02/15/2021] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
Abstract
Shape and spirit similarity are two kinds of common artistic modes in concept visualization. The adoption depends on the designers' subjective preference and judgment, which may cause potential risks for semantic communication. This article used pairs of real image-concrete word as the roots, and contrasted four kinds of multimodal mappings such as shape similarity-concrete concept, shape similarity-abstract concept, spirit similarity-concrete concept, and spirit similarity-abstract concept to compare the matching difference through the S1(picture)-S2(word) paradigm. The behavioral results showed that shape similarity had advantages in both matching rate and reaction time over spirit similarity, but the difference was more significant to the concrete word than to the abstract word. The ERPs showed that the N1, P2, and N400 components had alike effects with the behavioral results, but the mappings of spirit similarity-concrete concept elicited the largest positivity of P600, suggesting the complicated mechanisms of semantic integration and concreteness effect in the multimodal mappings. This study proves that the concrete concept should be visualized according to its appearance, not the most striking feature or function; but the visulization of abstract concept shows less difference after a concreteness transition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lei Zhou
- School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China
| | - Jian Ma
- School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China
| | - Xiaozhou Zhou
- School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China
| | - Yafeng Niu
- School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China
| | - Annette Chabebe
- School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China
| | - Chengqi Xue
- School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China.
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17
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Abstract
Figurative expressions have been shown to play a special role in evoking affective responses, as compared to their literal counterparts. This study provides the first database of conceptual metaphors that includes ratings of affective properties beyond psycholinguistic properties. To allow for the investigation of natural reading processes, 64 natural stories were created, half of which contained two or three conceptual metaphors that relied on the same mapping, whereas the other half contained the metaphors' literal counterparts. To allow for tighter control and manipulation of the different properties, 120 isolated sentences were also created, half of which contained one metaphorical word, which was replaced by its literal rendering in the other half. All stimuli were rated for emotional valence, arousal, imageability, and metaphoricity, and the pairs of metaphorical and literal stimuli were rated for their similarity in meaning. A measure of complexity was determined and computed. The stories were also rated for naturalness and understandability, and the sentences for familiarity. Differences between the metaphorical and literal stimuli and relationships between the affective and psycholinguistic variables were explored and are discussed in light of extant empirical research. In a nutshell, the metaphorical stimuli were rated as being higher in emotional arousal and easier to imagine than their literal counterparts, thus confirming a role of metaphor in evoking emotion and in activating sensorimotor representations. Affective variables showed the typical U-shaped relationship consistently found in word databases, whereby increasingly positive and negative valence is associated with higher arousal. Finally, interesting differences between the stories and sentences were observed.
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18
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An Electrophysiological Abstractness Effect for Metaphorical Meaning Making. eNeuro 2020; 7:ENEURO.0052-20.2020. [PMID: 32817197 PMCID: PMC7559308 DOI: 10.1523/eneuro.0052-20.2020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/09/2020] [Revised: 06/13/2020] [Accepted: 07/13/2020] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Neuroimaging studies show that metaphors activate sensorimotor areas. These findings were interpreted as metaphors contributing to conceptual thought by mapping concrete, somatosensory information onto abstract ideas. But is sensorimotor information a necessary constituent of figurative meaning? The present study employed event-related potentials (ERPs) in a divided visual field paradigm with healthy adults to explore the role of sensorimotor feature processing in the comprehension of novel metaphors via the electrophysiological concreteness effect. Participants read French, novel adjective-noun expressions that were either metaphorical (“fat sentence”) or literal (“fat hip”). While literal expressions evoked a typical concreteness effect, an enhanced frontal negativity during right hemisphere (RH) as opposed to left hemisphere (LH) presentation, metaphors showed no such sign of sensorimotor feature processing. Relative to literals, they evoked a sustained frontal negativity during LH presentation and similar amplitudes during RH presentation, but both of these effects were the greater the more abstract the metaphors were. It is the first time such an electrophysiological abstractness effect is reported, just the opposite of a concreteness effect. It is particularly noteworthy that ERPs evoked by metaphors were not contingent on figurativeness, novelty, meaningfulness, imageability, emotional valence, or arousal, only on abstractness. When compared with similarly novel literal expressions, metaphors did not evoke a typical N400 and did not activate the RH either. The findings shed new light on the neurocognitive machinery of figurative meaning construction, pervasive in everyday communication. Contrary to embodied cognition, the conceptual system might be organized around abstract representations and not sensorimotor information, even for lush, metaphorical language.
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19
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Joue G, Boven L, Willmes K, Evola V, Demenescu LR, Hassemer J, Mittelberg I, Mathiak K, Schneider F, Habel U. Metaphor processing is supramodal semantic processing: The role of the bilateral lateral temporal regions in multimodal communication. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2020; 205:104772. [PMID: 32126372 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2020.104772] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/21/2019] [Revised: 01/26/2020] [Accepted: 02/09/2020] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
This paper presents an fMRI study on healthy adult understanding of metaphors in multimodal communication. We investigated metaphors expressed either only in coverbal gestures ("monomodal metaphors") or in speech with accompanying gestures ("multimodal metaphors"). Monomodal metaphoric gestures convey metaphoric information not expressed in the accompanying speech (e.g. saying the non-metaphoric utterance, "She felt bad" while dropping down the hand with palm facing up; here, the gesture alone indicates metaphoricity), whereas coverbal gestures in multimodal metaphors indicate metaphoricity redundant to the speech (e.g. saying the metaphoric utterance, "Her spirits fell" while dropping the hand with palm facing up). In other words, in monomodal metaphors, gestures add information not spoken, whereas the gestures in multimodal metaphors can be redundant to the spoken content. Understanding and integrating the information in each modality, here spoken and visual, is important in multimodal communication, but most prior studies have only considered multimodal metaphors where the gesture is redundant to what is spoken. Our participants watched audiovisual clips of an actor speaking while gesturing. We found that abstract metaphor comprehension recruited the lateral superior/middle temporal cortices, regardless of the modality in which the conceptual metaphor is expressed. These results suggest that abstract metaphors, regardless of modality, involve resources implicated in general semantic processing and are consistent with the role of these areas in supramodal semantic processing as well as the theory of embodied cognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gina Joue
- Human Technology Center, RWTH Aachen University, Theaterplatz 14, 52056 Aachen, Germany; Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, School of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstraße 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany; Department of Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, 20246 Hamburg, Germany.
| | - Linda Boven
- School of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstraße 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany
| | - Klaus Willmes
- Section Neuropsychology, Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstraße 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany
| | - Vito Evola
- Human Technology Center, RWTH Aachen University, Theaterplatz 14, 52056 Aachen, Germany; Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology, Dahlmannstraße 2, 53113 Bonn, Germany; Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, New University of Lisbon, Portugal
| | - Liliana R Demenescu
- Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, School of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstraße 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany
| | - Julius Hassemer
- Human Technology Center, RWTH Aachen University, Theaterplatz 14, 52056 Aachen, Germany
| | - Irene Mittelberg
- Human Technology Center, RWTH Aachen University, Theaterplatz 14, 52056 Aachen, Germany
| | - Klaus Mathiak
- Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, School of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstraße 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany; JARA, Translational Brain Medicine, 52425 Jülich, Germany; Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Research Center Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany
| | - Frank Schneider
- Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, School of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstraße 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany
| | - Ute Habel
- Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, School of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstraße 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany
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20
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Lin N, Xu Y, Yang H, Zhang G, Zhang M, Wang S, Hua H, Li X. Dissociating the neural correlates of the sociality and plausibility effects in simple conceptual combination. Brain Struct Funct 2020; 225:995-1008. [PMID: 32140848 DOI: 10.1007/s00429-020-02052-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/11/2019] [Accepted: 02/19/2020] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
Abstract
Neuroimaging studies have indicated that a brain network distributed in the supramodal cortical regions of the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes plays a central role in conceptual processing. The activation of this network is modulated by two orthogonal dimensions in conceptual processing-the semantic features of individual concepts and the meaningfulness of conceptual combinations-but it remains unclear how the network is functionally organized along these two dimensions. In this fMRI study, we focused on two specific factors, i.e. the social semantic richness of words and the semantic plausibility of word combinations, along the two dimensions. In literature, the distributions of the effects of the two factors are very similar, but have not been rigorously compared in one study. We orthogonally manipulated the two factors in a phrase comprehension task and found a clear dissociation between their effects. The combination of these results with our previous findings reveals three adjacently distributed subnetworks of the supramodal semantic network, associated with the sociality effect, imageability effect, and semantic plausibility effect, respectively. Further analysis of the resting-state functional connectivity data indicated that the functional dissociation among the three subnetworks is associated with their underlying intrinsic connectivity structures.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nan Lin
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Beijing, 100101, China. .,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
| | - Yangwen Xu
- Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC), University of Trento, 38123, Trento, Italy.,International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), 34136, Trieste, Italy
| | - Huichao Yang
- National Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China
| | - Guangyao Zhang
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Beijing, 100101, China.,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China
| | - Meimei Zhang
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Beijing, 100101, China
| | - Shaonan Wang
- National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition, CASIA, Beijing, 100190, China.,University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China
| | - Huimin Hua
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Beijing, 100101, China.,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China
| | - Xingshan Li
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Beijing, 100101, China.,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China
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21
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Metaphorical language processing and amygdala activation in L1 and L2. Neuropsychologia 2020; 140:107381. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107381] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/08/2019] [Revised: 10/02/2019] [Accepted: 02/09/2020] [Indexed: 12/26/2022]
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22
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Frankland SM, Greene JD. Concepts and Compositionality: In Search of the Brain's Language of Thought. Annu Rev Psychol 2020; 71:273-303. [DOI: 10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011829] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
Imagine Genghis Khan, Aretha Franklin, and the Cleveland Cavaliers performing an opera on Maui. This silly sentence makes a serious point: As humans, we can flexibly generate and comprehend an unbounded number of complex ideas. Little is known, however, about how our brains accomplish this. Here we assemble clues from disparate areas of cognitive neuroscience, integrating recent research on language, memory, episodic simulation, and computational models of high-level cognition. Our review is framed by Fodor's classic language of thought hypothesis, according to which our minds employ an amodal, language-like system for combining and recombining simple concepts to form more complex thoughts. Here, we highlight emerging work on combinatorial processes in the brain and consider this work's relation to the language of thought. We review evidence for distinct, but complementary, contributions of map-like representations in subregions of the default mode network and sentence-like representations of conceptual relations in regions of the temporal and prefrontal cortex.
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Affiliation(s)
- Steven M. Frankland
- Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA
| | - Joshua D. Greene
- Department of Psychology and Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
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23
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Aryani A, Hsu CT, Jacobs AM. Affective iconic words benefit from additional sound-meaning integration in the left amygdala. Hum Brain Mapp 2019; 40:5289-5300. [PMID: 31444898 PMCID: PMC6864889 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.24772] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/12/2019] [Revised: 07/21/2019] [Accepted: 07/31/2019] [Indexed: 01/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Recent studies have shown that a similarity between sound and meaning of a word (i.e., iconicity) can help more readily access the meaning of that word, but the neural mechanisms underlying this beneficial role of iconicity in semantic processing remain largely unknown. In an fMRI study, we focused on the affective domain and examined whether affective iconic words (e.g., high arousal in both sound and meaning) activate additional brain regions that integrate emotional information from different domains (i.e., sound and meaning). In line with our hypothesis, affective iconic words, compared to their non‐iconic counterparts, elicited additional BOLD responses in the left amygdala known for its role in multimodal representation of emotions. Functional connectivity analyses revealed that the observed amygdalar activity was modulated by an interaction of iconic condition and activations in two hubs representative for processing sound (left superior temporal gyrus) and meaning (left inferior frontal gyrus) of words. These results provide a neural explanation for the facilitative role of iconicity in language processing and indicate that language users are sensitive to the interaction between sound and meaning aspect of words, suggesting the existence of iconicity as a general property of human language.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arash Aryani
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
| | - Chun-Ting Hsu
- Kokoro Research Center, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
| | - Arthur M Jacobs
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.,Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience Berlin (CCNB), Berlin, Germany
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24
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Idiomatic expressions evoke stronger emotional responses in the brain than literal sentences. Neuropsychologia 2019; 131:233-248. [PMID: 31152753 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.05.020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/01/2018] [Revised: 05/22/2019] [Accepted: 05/22/2019] [Indexed: 12/31/2022]
Abstract
Recent neuroscientific research shows that metaphors engage readers at the emotional level more strongly than literal expressions. What still remains unclear is what makes metaphors more engaging, and whether this generalises to all figurative expressions, no matter how conventionalised they are. This fMRI study aimed to investigate whether idiomatic expressions - the least creative part of figurative language - indeed trigger a higher affective resonance than literal expressions, and to explore possible interactions between activation in emotion-relevant neural structures and regions associated with figurative language processing. Participants silently read for comprehension a set of emotionally positive, negative and neutral idioms embedded in short sentences, and similarly valenced literal sentences. As in studies on metaphors, we found enhanced activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus and left amygdala in response to idioms, indexing stronger recruitment of executive control functions and enhanced emotional engagement, respectively. This suggests that the comprehension of even highly conventionalised and familiar figurative expressions, namely idioms, recruits regions involved in emotional processing. Furthermore, increased activation of the IFG interacted positively with activation in the amygdala, suggesting that the stronger cognitive engagement driven by idioms may in turn be coupled with stronger involvement at the emotional level.
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25
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Zou L, Packard JL, Xia Z, Liu Y, Shu H. Morphological and Whole-Word Semantic Processing Are Distinct: Event Related Potentials Evidence From Spoken Word Recognition in Chinese. Front Hum Neurosci 2019; 13:133. [PMID: 31057382 PMCID: PMC6478770 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00133] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/13/2018] [Accepted: 04/03/2019] [Indexed: 01/23/2023] Open
Abstract
Behavioral and imaging studies in alphabetic languages have shown that morphological processing is a discrete and independent element of lexical access. However, there is no explicit marker of morphological structure in Chinese complex words, such that the extent to which morpheme meaning is related to word meaning is unknown. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used in the present study to investigate the dissociation of morphemic and whole-word meaning in an auditory-auditory primed lexical decision task. All the prime and target words are compounds consisting of two Chinese morphemes. The relationship between morpheme and whole-word meaning was manipulated while controlling the phonology and orthography of the first syllable in each prime-target pair. A clear dissociation was found between morphemic and whole-word meaning on N400 amplitude and topography. Specifically, sharing a morpheme produced a larger N400 in the anterior-central electrode sites, while sharing whole-word meaning produced a smaller N400 in central-posterior electrode sites. In addition, the morphological N400 effect was negatively correlated with the participants' reading ability, with better readers needing less orthographic information to distinguish different morphemes in compound words. These findings indicate that morphological and whole-word meaning are dissociated in spoken Chinese compound word recognition and that even in the spoken language modality, good readers are better able to access the meaning of individual morphemes in Chinese compound word processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lijuan Zou
- School of Psychology and Education, Zaozhuang University, Zaozhuang, China
| | - Jerome L. Packard
- Beckman Institute, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, United States
| | - Zhichao Xia
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
- Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
| | - Youyi Liu
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
- Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
| | - Hua Shu
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
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26
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A Quantitative Meta-analysis of Neuroimaging Studies of Pragmatic Language Comprehension: In Search of a Universal Neural Substrate. Neuroscience 2018; 395:60-88. [PMID: 30414881 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2018.10.043] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/07/2018] [Revised: 10/27/2018] [Accepted: 10/30/2018] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
Abstract
Pragmatics may be defined as the ability to communicate by expressing and recognizing intentions. The objective of this meta-analysis was to identify neural substrates for comprehension of pragmatic content in general, as well as the differences between pragmatic forms, and to describe if there is differential recruitment of brain areas according to natural language. This meta-analysis included 48 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies that reported pragmatic versus literal language contrasts. The pragmatic forms were speech acts, metaphors, idioms, and irony. Effect Size-Signed Differential Mapping software was used to calculate the mean for all contrasts as well as for each pragmatic form, and make comparisons among all forms. Due to variations in pragmatic content configuration such as natural language, stimulus modality, and writing systems, these variations were also analyzed with subgroups' analyses. The analyses found a highly reproducible bilateral fronto-temporal and medial prefrontal cortex network for pragmatic comprehension. Each pragmatic form showed a specific convergence pattern within this bilateral network. Natural language analyses showed that fronto-temporal regions were recruited by Germanic languages, while only left frontal areas were recruited by Romance languages, and right medial prefrontal cortex by Japanese. In conclusion, pragmatic language comprehension involves classical language areas in bilateral perisylvian regions, along with the medial prefrontal cortex, an area involved in social cognition. Together, these areas could represent the "pragmatic language network". Nonetheless, when proposing a universal neural substrate for all forms of pragmatic language, the diversity among studies in terms of pragmatic form, and configuration, must be taken into consideration.
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27
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Leminen A, Smolka E, Duñabeitia JA, Pliatsikas C. Morphological processing in the brain: The good (inflection), the bad (derivation) and the ugly (compounding). Cortex 2018; 116:4-44. [PMID: 30268324 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2018.08.016] [Citation(s) in RCA: 40] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/08/2018] [Revised: 07/01/2018] [Accepted: 08/22/2018] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
There is considerable behavioral evidence that morphologically complex words such as 'tax-able' and 'kiss-es' are processed and represented combinatorially. In other words, they are decomposed into their constituents 'tax' and '-able' during comprehension (reading or listening), and producing them might also involve on-the-spot combination of these constituents (especially for inflections). However, despite increasing amount of neurocognitive research, the neural mechanisms underlying these processes are still not fully understood. The purpose of this critical review is to offer a comprehensive overview on the state-of-the-art of the research on the neural mechanisms of morphological processing. In order to take into account all types of complex words, we include findings on inflected, derived, and compound words presented both visually and aurally. More specifically, we cover a wide range of electro- and magnetoencephalography (EEG and MEG, respectively) as well as structural/functional magnetic resonance imaging (s/fMRI) studies that focus on morphological processing. We present the findings with respect to the temporal course and localization of morphologically complex word processing. We summarize the observed findings, their interpretations with respect to current psycholinguistic models, and discuss methodological approaches as well as their possible limitations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alina Leminen
- Cognitive Science, Department of Digital Humanities, Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki, Finland; Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
| | - Eva Smolka
- Department of Linguistics, University of Konstanz, Germany
| | - Jon A Duñabeitia
- Facultad de Lenguas y Educación, Universidad Nebrija, Madrid, Spain; Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL), Donostia, Spain
| | - Christos Pliatsikas
- School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom
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28
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Hofmann MJ, Biemann C, Westbury C, Murusidze M, Conrad M, Jacobs AM. Simple Co‐Occurrence Statistics Reproducibly Predict Association Ratings. Cogn Sci 2018; 42:2287-2312. [DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12662] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/12/2016] [Revised: 05/11/2018] [Accepted: 05/17/2018] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Affiliation(s)
| | - Chris Biemann
- Department of Computer Science University of Hamburg
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29
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Abstract
Fiction is vital to our being. Many people enjoy engaging with fiction every day. Here we focus on literary reading as 1 instance of fiction consumption from a cognitive neuroscience perspective. The brain processes which play a role in the mental construction of fiction worlds and the related engagement with fictional characters, remain largely unknown. The authors discuss the neurocognitive poetics model ( Jacobs, 2015a ) of literary reading specifying the likely neuronal correlates of several key processes in literary reading, namely inference and situation model building, immersion, mental simulation and imagery, figurative language and style, and the issue of distinguishing fact from fiction. An overview of recent work on these key processes is followed by a discussion of methodological challenges in studying the brain bases of fiction processing.
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30
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Differential cortical contribution of syntax and semantics: An fMRI study on two-word phrasal processing. Cortex 2017; 96:105-120. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2017.09.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 65] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/05/2017] [Revised: 07/17/2017] [Accepted: 09/05/2017] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
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31
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When emotions are expressed figuratively: Psycholinguistic and Affective Norms of 619 Idioms for German (PANIG). Behav Res Methods 2016; 48:91-111. [PMID: 25821142 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-015-0581-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 44] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Despite flourishing research on the relationship between emotion and literal language, and despite the pervasiveness of figurative expressions in communication, the role of figurative language in conveying affect has been underinvestigated. This study provides affective and psycholinguistic norms for 619 German idiomatic expressions and explores the relationships between affective and psycholinguistic idiom properties. German native speakers rated each idiom for emotional valence, arousal, familiarity, semantic transparency, figurativeness, and concreteness. They also described the figurative meaning of each idiom and rated how confident they were about the attributed meaning. The results showed that idioms rated high in valence were also rated high in arousal. Negative idioms were rated as more arousing than positive ones, in line with results from single words. Furthermore, arousal correlated positively with figurativeness (supporting the idea that figurative expressions are more emotionally engaging than literal expressions) and with concreteness and semantic transparency. This suggests that idioms may convey a more direct reference to sensory representations, mediated by the meanings of their constituting words. Arousal correlated positively with familiarity. In addition, positive idioms were rated as more familiar than negative idioms. Finally, idioms without a literal counterpart were rated as more emotionally valenced and arousing than idioms with a literal counterpart. Although the meanings of ambiguous idioms were less correctly defined than those of unambiguous idioms, ambiguous idioms were rated as more concrete than unambiguous ones. We also discuss the relationships between the various psycholinguistic variables characterizing idioms, with reference to the literature on idiom structure and processing.
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32
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Jacobs A, Hofmann MJ, Kinder A. On Elementary Affective Decisions: To Like Or Not to Like, That Is the Question. Front Psychol 2016; 7:1836. [PMID: 27933013 PMCID: PMC5122311 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01836] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/22/2016] [Accepted: 11/07/2016] [Indexed: 12/31/2022] Open
Abstract
Perhaps the most ubiquitous and basic affective decision of daily life is deciding whether we like or dislike something/somebody, or, in terms of psychological emotion theories, whether the object/subject has positive or negative valence. Indeed, people constantly make such liking decisions within a glimpse and, importantly, often without expecting any obvious benefit or knowing the exact reasons for their judgment. In this paper, we review research on such elementary affective decisions (EADs) that entail no direct overt reward with a special focus on Neurocognitive Poetics and discuss methods and models for investigating the neuronal and cognitive-affective bases of EADs to verbal materials with differing degrees of complexity. In line with evolutionary and appraisal theories of (aesthetic) emotions and data from recent neurocognitive studies, the results of a decision tree modeling approach simulating EADs to single words suggest that a main driving force behind EADs is the extent to which such high-dimensional stimuli are associated with the “basic” emotions joy/happiness and disgust.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arthur Jacobs
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany; Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany; Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
| | - Markus J Hofmann
- Department of General and Biological Psychology, Bergische Universität Wuppertal Wuppertal, Germany
| | - Annette Kinder
- Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin Berlin, Germany
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Neural correlates of multimodal metaphor comprehension: Evidence from event-related potentials and time-frequency decompositions. Int J Psychophysiol 2016; 109:81-91. [DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2016.09.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/03/2016] [Revised: 08/12/2016] [Accepted: 09/09/2016] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
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Mixing positive and negative valence: Affective-semantic integration of bivalent words. Sci Rep 2016; 6:30718. [PMID: 27491491 PMCID: PMC4974501 DOI: 10.1038/srep30718] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/22/2015] [Accepted: 07/06/2016] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
Single words have affective and aesthetic properties that influence their processing. Here we investigated the processing of a special case of word stimuli that are extremely difficult to evaluate, bivalent noun-noun-compounds (NNCs), i.e. novel words that mix a positive and negative noun, e.g. ‘Bombensex’ (bomb-sex). In a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment we compared their processing with easier-to-evaluate non-bivalent NNCs in a valence decision task (VDT). Bivalent NNCs produced longer reaction times and elicited greater activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) than non-bivalent words, especially in contrast to words of negative valence. We attribute this effect to a LIFG-grounded process of semantic integration that requires greater effort for processing converse information, supporting the notion of a valence representation based on associations in semantic networks.
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Bambini V, Bertini C, Schaeken W, Stella A, Di Russo F. Disentangling Metaphor from Context: An ERP Study. Front Psychol 2016; 7:559. [PMID: 27199799 PMCID: PMC4853386 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00559] [Citation(s) in RCA: 56] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/07/2015] [Accepted: 04/05/2016] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
A large body of electrophysiological literature showed that metaphor comprehension elicits two different event-related brain potential responses, namely the so-called N400 and P600 components. Yet most of these studies test metaphor in isolation while in natural conversation metaphors do not come out of the blue but embedded in linguistic and extra-linguistic context. This study aimed at assessing the role of context in the metaphor comprehension process. We recorded EEG activity while participants were presented with metaphors and equivalent literal expressions in a minimal context (Experiment 1) and in a supportive context where the word expressing the ground between the metaphor's topic and vehicle was made explicit (Experiment 2). The N400 effect was visible only in minimal context, whereas the P600 was visible both in the absence and in the presence of contextual cues. These findings suggest that the N400 observed for metaphor is related to contextual aspects, possibly indexing contextual expectations on upcoming words that guide lexical access and retrieval, while the P600 seems to reflect truly pragmatic interpretative processes needed to make sense of a metaphor and derive the speaker's meaning, also in the presence of contextual cues. In sum, previous information in the linguistic context biases toward a metaphorical interpretation but does not suppress interpretative pragmatic mechanisms to establish the intended meaning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Valentina Bambini
- Center for Neurocognition, Epistemology and theoretical Syntax (NEtS), Institute for Advanced Study (IUSS) Pavia, Italy
| | - Chiara Bertini
- Laboratorio di Linguistica "G. Nencioni", Scuola Normale Superiore Pisa, Italy
| | - Walter Schaeken
- Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, KU Leuven Leuven, Belgium
| | - Alessandra Stella
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome "Foro Italico" Rome, Italy
| | - Francesco Di Russo
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome "Foro Italico"Rome, Italy; Istituti di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico Santa Lucia FoundationRome, Italy
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Bachrach A, Jola C, Pallier C. Neuronal bases of structural coherence in contemporary dance observation. Neuroimage 2015; 124:464-472. [PMID: 26348557 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.08.072] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/07/2015] [Revised: 08/19/2015] [Accepted: 08/22/2015] [Indexed: 11/27/2022] Open
Abstract
The neuronal processes underlying dance observation have been the focus of an increasing number of brain imaging studies over the past decade. However, the existing literature mainly dealt with effects of motor and visual expertise, whereas the neural and cognitive mechanisms that underlie the interpretation of dance choreographies remained unexplored. Hence, much attention has been given to the action observation network (AON) whereas the role of other potentially relevant neuro-cognitive mechanisms such as mentalizing (theory of mind) or language (narrative comprehension) in dance understanding is yet to be elucidated. We report the results of an fMRI study where the structural coherence of short contemporary dance choreographies was manipulated parametrically using the same taped movement material. Our participants were all trained dancers. The whole-brain analysis argues that the interpretation of structurally coherent dance phrases involves a subpart (superior parietal) of the AON as well as mentalizing regions in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. An ROI analysis based on a similar study using linguistic materials (Pallier et al., 2011) suggests that structural processing in language and dance might share certain neural mechanisms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Asaf Bachrach
- Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, CEA DSV/I2BM, INSERM, UniversitéParis-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, NeuroSpin center, 91191Gif/Yvette, France; Structures Formelles du Langage UMR 7023 (CNRS - Université Paris 8), Paris 75017, France.
| | - Corinne Jola
- Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, CEA DSV/I2BM, INSERM, UniversitéParis-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, NeuroSpin center, 91191Gif/Yvette, France; Division of Psychology, Abertay University , Dundee DD1 1HG, UK
| | - Christophe Pallier
- Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, CEA DSV/I2BM, INSERM, UniversitéParis-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, NeuroSpin center, 91191Gif/Yvette, France
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Rhetorical features facilitate prosodic processing while handicapping ease of semantic comprehension. Cognition 2015; 143:48-60. [PMID: 26113449 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.05.026] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/11/2014] [Revised: 04/30/2015] [Accepted: 05/26/2015] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
Abstract
Studies on rhetorical features of language have reported both enhancing and adverse effects on ease of processing. We hypothesized that two explanations may account for these inconclusive findings. First, the respective gains and losses in ease of processing may apply to different dimensions of language processing (specifically, prosodic and semantic processing) and different types of fluency (perceptual vs. conceptual) and may well allow for an integration into a more comprehensive framework. Second, the effects of rhetorical features may be sensitive to interactions with other rhetorical features; employing a feature separately or in combination with others may then predict starkly different effects. We designed a series of experiments in which we expected the same rhetorical features of the very same sentences to exert adverse effects on semantic (conceptual) fluency and enhancing effects on prosodic (perceptual) fluency. We focused on proverbs that each employ three rhetorical features: rhyme, meter, and brevitas (i.e., artful shortness). The presence of these target features decreased ease of conceptual fluency (semantic comprehension) while enhancing perceptual fluency as reflected in beauty and succinctness ratings that were mainly driven by prosodic features. The rhetorical features also predicted choices for persuasive purposes, yet only for the sentence versions featuring all three rhetorical features; the presence of only one or two rhetorical features had an adverse effect on the choices made. We suggest that the facilitating effects of a combination of rhyme, meter, and rhetorical brevitas on perceptual (prosodic) fluency overcompensated for their adverse effects on conceptual (semantic) fluency, thus resulting in a total net gain both in processing ease and in choices for persuasive purposes.
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Jacobs AM, Võ MLH, Briesemeister BB, Conrad M, Hofmann MJ, Kuchinke L, Lüdtke J, Braun M. 10 years of BAWLing into affective and aesthetic processes in reading: what are the echoes? Front Psychol 2015; 6:714. [PMID: 26089808 PMCID: PMC4452804 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00714] [Citation(s) in RCA: 55] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/20/2014] [Accepted: 05/13/2015] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Reading is not only "cold" information processing, but involves affective and aesthetic processes that go far beyond what current models of word recognition, sentence processing, or text comprehension can explain. To investigate such "hot" reading processes, standardized instruments that quantify both psycholinguistic and emotional variables at the sublexical, lexical, inter-, and supralexical levels (e.g., phonological iconicity, word valence, arousal-span, or passage suspense) are necessary. One such instrument, the Berlin Affective Word List (BAWL) has been used in over 50 published studies demonstrating effects of lexical emotional variables on all relevant processing levels (experiential, behavioral, neuronal). In this paper, we first present new data from several BAWL studies. Together, these studies examine various views on affective effects in reading arising from dimensional (e.g., valence) and discrete emotion features (e.g., happiness), or embodied cognition features like smelling. Second, we extend our investigation of the complex issue of affective word processing to words characterized by a mixture of affects. These words entail positive and negative valence, and/or features making them beautiful or ugly. Finally, we discuss tentative neurocognitive models of affective word processing in the light of the present results, raising new issues for future studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arthur M. Jacobs
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion”, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of EmotionBerlin, Germany
| | - Melissa L.-H. Võ
- Scene Grammar Lab, Department of Cognitive Psychology, Goethe University FrankfurtFrankfurt, Germany
| | - Benny B. Briesemeister
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
| | - Markus Conrad
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion”, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Department of Cognitive, Social and Organizational Psychology, Universidad de La LagunaSan Cristóbal de La Laguna, Spain
| | - Markus J. Hofmann
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Department of Psychology, General and Biological Psychology, University of WuppertalWuppertal, Germany
| | - Lars Kuchinke
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion”, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Experimental Psychology and Methods, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr Universität BochumBochum, Germany
| | - Jana Lüdtke
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion”, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
| | - Mario Braun
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Universität SalzburgSalzburg, Austria
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Jacobs AM. Neurocognitive poetics: methods and models for investigating the neuronal and cognitive-affective bases of literature reception. Front Hum Neurosci 2015; 9:186. [PMID: 25932010 PMCID: PMC4399337 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00186] [Citation(s) in RCA: 134] [Impact Index Per Article: 14.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/15/2015] [Accepted: 03/20/2015] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
A long tradition of research including classical rhetoric, esthetics and poetics theory, formalism and structuralism, as well as current perspectives in (neuro)cognitive poetics has investigated structural and functional aspects of literature reception. Despite a wealth of literature published in specialized journals like Poetics, however, still little is known about how the brain processes and creates literary and poetic texts. Still, such stimulus material might be suited better than other genres for demonstrating the complexities with which our brain constructs the world in and around us, because it unifies thought and language, music and imagery in a clear, manageable way, most often with play, pleasure, and emotion (Schrott and Jacobs, 2011). In this paper, I discuss methods and models for investigating the neuronal and cognitive-affective bases of literary reading together with pertinent results from studies on poetics, text processing, emotion, or neuroaesthetics, and outline current challenges and future perspectives.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arthur M. Jacobs
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Center for Cognitive Neuroscience (CCNB), Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion (D.I.N.E.), Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
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40
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Hsu CT, Jacobs AM, Altmann U, Conrad M. The magical activation of left amygdala when reading Harry Potter: an fMRI study on how descriptions of supra-natural events entertain and enchant. PLoS One 2015; 10:e0118179. [PMID: 25671315 PMCID: PMC4324997 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0118179] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/28/2014] [Accepted: 01/08/2015] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Literature containing supra-natural, or magical events has enchanted generations of readers. When reading narratives describing such events, readers mentally simulate a text world different from the real one. The corresponding violation of world-knowledge during this simulation likely increases cognitive processing demands for ongoing discourse integration, catches readers’ attention, and might thus contribute to the pleasure and deep emotional experience associated with ludic immersive reading. In the present study, we presented participants in an MR scanner with passages selected from the Harry Potter book series, half of which described magical events, while the other half served as control condition. Passages in both conditions were closely matched for relevant psycholinguistic variables including, e.g., emotional valence and arousal, passage-wise mean word imageability and frequency, and syntactic complexity. Post-hoc ratings showed that readers considered supra-natural contents more surprising and more strongly associated with reading pleasure than control passages. In the fMRI data, we found stronger neural activation for the supra-natural than the control condition in bilateral inferior frontal gyri, bilateral inferior parietal lobules, left fusiform gyrus, and left amygdala. The increased activation in the amygdala (part of the salience and emotion processing network) appears to be associated with feelings of surprise and the reading pleasure, which supra-natural events, full of novelty and unexpectedness, brought about. The involvement of bilateral inferior frontal gyri likely reflects higher cognitive processing demand due to world knowledge violations, whereas increased attention to supra-natural events is reflected in inferior frontal gyri and inferior parietal lobules that are part of the fronto-parietal attention network.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chun-Ting Hsu
- Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195, Berlin, Germany
- Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195, Berlin, Germany
- * E-mail:
| | - Arthur M. Jacobs
- Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195, Berlin, Germany
- Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195, Berlin, Germany
- Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion (D.I.N.E.), Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195, Berlin, Germany
| | - Ulrike Altmann
- Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195, Berlin, Germany
- Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195, Berlin, Germany
| | - Markus Conrad
- Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195, Berlin, Germany
- Department of Cognitive, Social and Organizational Psychology, Universidad de La Laguna, 38205, San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Spain
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41
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Forgács B, Bardolph MD, Amsel BD, DeLong KA, Kutas M. Metaphors are physical and abstract: ERPs to metaphorically modified nouns resemble ERPs to abstract language. Front Hum Neurosci 2015; 9:28. [PMID: 25713520 PMCID: PMC4322728 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00028] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/15/2014] [Accepted: 01/12/2015] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
Metaphorical expressions very often involve words referring to physical entities and experiences. Yet, figures of speech such as metaphors are not intended to be understood literally, word-by-word. We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to determine whether metaphorical expressions are processed more like physical or more like abstract expressions. To this end, novel adjective-noun word pairs were presented visually in three conditions: (1) Physical, easy to experience with the senses (e.g., “printed schedule”); (2) Abstract, difficult to experience with the senses (e.g., “conditional schedule”); and (3) novel Metaphorical, expressions with a physical adjective, but a figurative meaning (e.g., “thin schedule”). We replicated the N400 lexical concreteness effect for concrete vs. abstract adjectives. In order to increase the sensitivity of the concreteness manipulation on the expressions, we divided each condition into high and low groups according to rated concreteness. Mirroring the adjective result, we observed a N400 concreteness effect at the noun for physical expressions with high concreteness ratings vs. abstract expressions with low concreteness ratings, even though the nouns per se did not differ in lexical concreteness. Paradoxically, the N400 to nouns in the metaphorical expressions was indistinguishable from that to nouns in the literal abstract expressions, but only for the more concrete subgroup of metaphors; the N400 to the less concrete subgroup of metaphors patterned with that to nouns in the literal concrete expressions. In sum, we not only find evidence for conceptual concreteness separable from lexical concreteness but also that the processing of metaphorical expressions is not driven strictly by either lexical or conceptual concreteness.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bálint Forgács
- Kutas Cognitive Electrophysiology Lab, Department of Cognitive Science, University of California San Diego, CA, USA ; Cognitive Development Center, Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University Budapest, Hungary ; Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, Université Paris Descartes Paris, France
| | - Megan D Bardolph
- Kutas Cognitive Electrophysiology Lab, Department of Cognitive Science, University of California San Diego, CA, USA
| | - Ben D Amsel
- Kutas Cognitive Electrophysiology Lab, Department of Cognitive Science, University of California San Diego, CA, USA
| | - Katherine A DeLong
- Kutas Cognitive Electrophysiology Lab, Department of Cognitive Science, University of California San Diego, CA, USA
| | - Marta Kutas
- Kutas Cognitive Electrophysiology Lab, Department of Cognitive Science, University of California San Diego, CA, USA
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Lai VT, van Dam W, Conant LL, Binder JR, Desai RH. Familiarity differentially affects right hemisphere contributions to processing metaphors and literals. Front Hum Neurosci 2015; 9:44. [PMID: 25713522 PMCID: PMC4322727 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00044] [Citation(s) in RCA: 27] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/02/2014] [Accepted: 01/16/2015] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The role of the two hemispheres in processing metaphoric language is controversial. While some studies have reported a special role of the right hemisphere (RH) in processing metaphors, others indicate no difference in laterality relative to literal language. Some studies have found a role of the RH for novel/unfamiliar metaphors, but not conventional/familiar metaphors. It is not clear, however, whether the role of the RH is specific to metaphor novelty, or whether it reflects processing, reinterpretation or reanalysis of novel/unfamiliar language in general. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the effects of familiarity in both metaphoric and non-metaphoric sentences. A left lateralized network containing the middle and inferior frontal gyri, posterior temporal regions in the left hemisphere (LH), and inferior frontal regions in the RH, was engaged across both metaphoric and non-metaphoric sentences; engagement of this network decreased as familiarity decreased. No region was engaged selectively for greater metaphoric unfamiliarity. An analysis of laterality, however, showed that the contribution of the RH relative to that of LH does increase in a metaphor-specific manner as familiarity decreases. These results show that RH regions, taken by themselves, including commonly reported regions such as the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), are responsive to increased cognitive demands of processing unfamiliar stimuli, rather than being metaphor-selective. The division of labor between the two hemispheres, however, does shift towards the right for metaphoric processing. The shift results not because the RH contributes more to metaphoric processing. Rather, relative to its contribution for processing literals, the LH contributes less.
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Affiliation(s)
- Vicky T Lai
- Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina Columbia, SC, USA
| | - Wessel van Dam
- Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina Columbia, SC, USA
| | - Lisa L Conant
- Department of Neurology, Medical College of Wisconsin Milwaukee, WI, USA
| | - Jeffrey R Binder
- Department of Neurology, Medical College of Wisconsin Milwaukee, WI, USA
| | - Rutvik H Desai
- Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina Columbia, SC, USA
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43
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Ianni GR, Cardillo ER, McQuire M, Chatterjee A. Flying under the radar: figurative language impairments in focal lesion patients. Front Hum Neurosci 2014; 8:871. [PMID: 25404906 PMCID: PMC4217389 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00871] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/04/2014] [Accepted: 10/08/2014] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Despite the prevalent and natural use of metaphor in everyday language, the neural basis of this powerful communication device remains poorly understood. Early studies of brain-injured patients suggested the right hemisphere plays a critical role in metaphor comprehension, but more recent patient and neuroimaging studies do not consistently support this hypothesis. One explanation for this discrepancy is the challenge in designing optimal tasks for brain-injured populations. As traditional aphasia assessments do not assess figurative language comprehension, we designed a new metaphor comprehension task to consider whether impaired metaphor processing is missed by standard clinical assessments. Stimuli consisted of 60 pairs of moderately familiar metaphors and closely matched literal sentences. Sentences were presented visually in a randomized order, followed by four adjective-noun answer choices (target + three foil types). Participants were instructed to select the phrase that best matched the meaning of the sentence. We report the performance of three focal lesion patients and a group of 12 healthy, older controls. Controls performed near ceiling in both conditions, with slightly more accurate performance on literal than metaphoric sentences. While the Western Aphasia Battery (Kertesz, 1982) and the objects and actions naming battery (Druks and Masterson, 2000) indicated minimal to no language difficulty, our metaphor comprehension task indicated three different profiles of metaphor comprehension impairment in the patients’ performance. Single case statistics revealed comparable impairment on metaphoric and literal sentences, disproportionately greater impairment on metaphors than literal sentences, and selective impairment on metaphors. We conclude our task reveals that patients can have selective metaphor comprehension deficits. These deficits are not captured by traditional neuropsychological language assessments, suggesting overlooked communication difficulties.
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Affiliation(s)
- Geena R Ianni
- Section on Neurocircuitry, Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health Bethesda, MD, USA
| | - Eileen R Cardillo
- Department of Neurology, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Marguerite McQuire
- Department of Neurology, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Anjan Chatterjee
- Department of Neurology, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA, USA
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Hofmann MJ, Jacobs AM. Interactive activation and competition models and semantic context: From behavioral to brain data. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2014; 46 Pt 1:85-104. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.06.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 59] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/30/2013] [Revised: 04/14/2014] [Accepted: 06/23/2014] [Indexed: 10/25/2022]
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45
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Weiland H, Bambini V, Schumacher PB. The role of literal meaning in figurative language comprehension: evidence from masked priming ERP. Front Hum Neurosci 2014; 8:583. [PMID: 25136309 PMCID: PMC4120764 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00583] [Citation(s) in RCA: 39] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/03/2014] [Accepted: 07/14/2014] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The role of literal meaning during the construction of meaning that goes beyond pure literal composition was investigated by combining cross-modal masked priming and ERPs. This experimental design was chosen to compare two conflicting theoretical positions on this topic. The indirect access account claims that literal aspects are processed first, and additional meaning components are computed only if no satisfactory interpretation is reached. In contrast, the direct access approach argues that figurative aspects can be accessed immediately. We presented metaphors (These lawyers are hyenas, Experiment 1a and 1b) and producer-for-product metonymies (The boy read Böll, Experiment 2a and 2b) with and without a prime word that was semantically relevant to the literal meaning of the target word (furry and talented, respectively). In the presentation without priming, metaphors revealed a biphasic N400-Late Positivity pattern, while metonymies showed an N400 only. We interpret the findings within a two-phase language architecture where contextual expectations guide initial access (N400) and precede pragmatic adjustment resulting in reconceptualization (Late Positivity). With masked priming, the N400-difference was reduced for metaphors and vanished for metonymies. This speaks against the direct access view that predicts a facilitating effect for the literal condition only and hence would predict the N400-difference to increase. The results are more consistent with indirect access accounts that argue for facilitation effects for both conditions and consequently for consistent or even smaller N400-amplitude differences. This combined masked priming ERP paradigm therefore yields new insights into the role of literal meaning in the online composition of figurative language.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hanna Weiland
- Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz Mainz, Germany
| | - Valentina Bambini
- Center for Neurocognition and Theoretical Syntax, Institute for Advanced Study IUSS Pavia Pavia, Italy
| | - Petra B Schumacher
- Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz Mainz, Germany ; Institute of German Language and Literature I, University of Cologne Cologne, Germany
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46
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Boutonnet B, McClain R, Thierry G. Compound words prompt arbitrary semantic associations in conceptual memory. Front Psychol 2014; 5:222. [PMID: 24672505 PMCID: PMC3953663 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00222] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/19/2013] [Accepted: 02/26/2014] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Abstract
Linguistic relativity theory has received empirical support in domains such as color perception and object categorization. It is unknown, however, whether relations between words idiosyncratic to language impact non-verbal representations and conceptualizations. For instance, would one consider the concepts of horse and sea as related were it not for the existence of the compound seahorse? Here, we investigated such arbitrary conceptual relationships using a non-linguistic picture relatedness task in participants undergoing event-related brain potential recordings. Picture pairs arbitrarily related because of a compound and presented in the compound order elicited N400 amplitudes similar to unrelated pairs. Surprisingly, however, pictures presented in the reverse order (as in the sequence horse–sea) reduced N400 amplitudes significantly, demonstrating the existence of a link in memory between these two concepts otherwise unrelated. These results break new ground in the domain of linguistic relativity by revealing predicted semantic associations driven by lexical relations intrinsic to language.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bastien Boutonnet
- ESRC Bilingualism Centre, Bangor University Bangor, UK ; School of Psychology, Bangor University Bangor, UK
| | | | - Guillaume Thierry
- ESRC Bilingualism Centre, Bangor University Bangor, UK ; School of Psychology, Bangor University Bangor, UK
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Schneider S, Rapp AM, Haeußinger FB, Ernst LH, Hamm F, Fallgatter AJ, Ehlis AC. Beyond the N400: complementary access to early neural correlates of novel metaphor comprehension using combined electrophysiological and haemodynamic measurements. Cortex 2014; 53:45-59. [PMID: 24566043 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2014.01.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 26] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/14/2013] [Revised: 10/05/2013] [Accepted: 01/14/2014] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
The simultaneous application of different neuroimaging methods combining high temporal and spatial resolution can uniquely contribute to current issues and open questions in the field of pragmatic language perception. In the present study, comprehension of novel metaphors was investigated using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) combined with the simultaneous acquisition of electroencephalography (EEG)/event-related potentials (ERPs). For the first time, we investigated the effects of figurative language on early electrophysiological markers (P200, N400) and their functional relationship to cortical haemodynamic responses within the language network (Broca's area, Wernicke's area). To this end, 20 healthy subjects judged 120 sentences with respect to their meaningfulness, whereby phrases were either literal, metaphoric, or meaningless. Our results indicated a metaphor-specific P200 reduction and a linear increase of N400 amplitudes from literal over metaphoric to meaningless sentences. Moreover, there were metaphor related effects on haemodynamic responses accessed with NIRS, especially within the left lateral frontal cortex (Broca's area). Significant correlations between electrophysiological and haemodynamic responses indicated that P200 reductions during metaphor comprehension were associated with an increased recruitment of neural activity within left Wernicke's area, indicating a link between variations in neural activity and haemodynamic changes within Wernicke's area. This link may reflect processes related to interindividual differences regarding the ability to classify novel metaphors. The present study underlines the usefulness of simultaneous NIRS measurements in language paradigms - especially for investigating the functional significance of neurophysiological markers that have so far been rarely examined - as these measurements are easily and efficiently realizable and allow for a complementary examination of neural activity and associated metabolic changes in cortical areas.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sabrina Schneider
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tuebingen, Germany.
| | - Alexander M Rapp
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tuebingen, Germany
| | | | - Lena H Ernst
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tuebingen, Germany
| | - Friedrich Hamm
- Department of Linguistics, University of Tuebingen, Germany
| | | | - Ann-Christine Ehlis
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tuebingen, Germany
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Forgács B, Lukács A, Pléh C. Lateralized processing of novel metaphors: disentangling figurativeness and novelty. Neuropsychologia 2014; 56:101-9. [PMID: 24418155 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.01.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/21/2012] [Revised: 10/09/2013] [Accepted: 01/04/2014] [Indexed: 10/25/2022]
Abstract
One of the intriguing and sometimes controversial findings in figurative language research is a right-hemisphere processing advantage for novel metaphors. The current divided visual field study introduced novel literal expressions as a control condition to assess processing novelty independent of figurativeness. Participants evaluated word pairs belonging to one of the five categories: (1) conventional metaphorical, (2) conventional literal, (3) novel metaphorical, (4) novel literal, and (5) unrelated expressions in a semantic decision task. We presented expressions without sentence context and controlled for additional factors including emotional valence, arousal, and imageability that could potentially influence hemispheric processing. We also utilized an eye-tracker to ensure lateralized presentation. We did not find the previously reported right-hemispherical processing advantage for novel metaphors. Processing was faster in the left hemisphere for all types of word pairs, and accuracy was also higher in the right visual field - left hemisphere. Novel metaphors were processed just as fast as novel literal expressions, suggesting that the primary challenge during the comprehension of novel expressions is not a serial processing of salience, but perhaps a more left hemisphere weighted semantic integration. Our results cast doubt on the right-hemisphere theory of metaphors, and raise the possibility that other uncontrolled variables were responsible for previous results. The lateralization of processing of two word expressions seems to be more contingent on the specific task at hand than their figurativeness or saliency.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bálint Forgács
- Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), Department of Cognitive Science, Egry József utca 1, T building, V. 506, 1111 Budapest, Hungary; Central European University (CEU), Department of Cognitive Science, Frankel Leó út 30-34, 1023 Budapest, Hungary.
| | - Agnes Lukács
- Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), Department of Cognitive Science, Egry József utca 1, T building, V. 506, 1111 Budapest, Hungary.
| | - Csaba Pléh
- Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), Department of Cognitive Science, Egry József utca 1, T building, V. 506, 1111 Budapest, Hungary; Eszterházy Károly College, Doctoral School of Education, Eszterházy tér 1, 3300 Eger, Hungary.
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