Beyond Laterality: A Critical Assessment of Research on the Neural Basis of Metaphor

Abstract

Metaphors are a fundamental aspect of human cognition. The major neuropsychological hypothesis that metaphoric processing relies primarily on the right hemisphere is not confirmed consistently. We propose ways to advance our understanding of the neuropsychology of metaphor that go beyond simple laterality. Neuropsychological studies need to more carefully control confounding lexical and sentential factors, and consider the role of different parts of speech as they are extended metaphorically. They need to incorporate recent theoretical frameworks such as the career of metaphor theory, and address factors such as novelty. We also advocate the use of new methods such as voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping, which permits precise and formal tests of hypotheses correlating behavior with lesions sites. Finally, we outline a plausible model for the neural basis of metaphor.

Stimulus needs are a moving target: 240 additional matched literal and metaphorical sentences for testing neural hypotheses about metaphor

“…For instance, the relationship between how apt we find a metaphor, our familiarity with it, and the ease and means with which we understand it remains unsettled-is the career of metaphor model sufficient to account for aptness effects (Bowdle & Gentner, 2005;Jones & Estes, 2006)? How can existing models of metaphor comprehension, based on studies of nominal metaphors, be tested or extended to account for predicate metaphors Schmidt et al, 2010)? How does linguistic context modulate the role of such factors as familiarity and figurativeness (Giora, 1997)?…”

Using Automated Metaphor Identification to Aid in Detection and Prediction of First-Episode Schizophrenia

“…Based on these findings, and recognizing the important role that metaphor plays in emotional language (see (Kövecses, 2003)), Elvevåg et al (2011) hypothesize that metaphor production disturbances in patients with schizophrenia are deeply tied to "emotional" language (i.e., language with high affective polarity). However, it should be noted in this regard that most work on metaphor processing has focused on cortical regions involved (Chen et al, 2008;Schmidt et al, 2010;Benedek et al, 2014).…”

Hemispheric differences in figurative language processing: Contributions of neuroimaging methods and challenges in reconciling current empirical findings

“…More importantly, it would also be unwise to mix these kinds of conventional metaphors (close to literal meaning) with more metaphoric word pairs, without explicitly examining "conventionality" as a factor. Moreover, in these studies, metaphoric word pairs are presented without a sentential context; thus, word-level investigations are limited to familiar metaphorical relationships that can be interpreted without a context (Schmidt, Kranjec, Cardillo, & Chatterjee, 2009). The processing of single metaphorically employed words may represent a different cognitive task than processing sentential metaphors and, therefore, reveal different lateralization effects.…”