Engagement of the left extrastriate body area during body-part metaphor comprehension

Abstract

Grounded cognition explanations of metaphor comprehension predict activation of sensorimotor cortices relevant to the metaphor's source domain. We tested this prediction for body-part metaphors using functional magnetic resonance imaging while participants heard sentences containing metaphorical or literal references to body parts, and comparable control sentences. Localizer scans identified body-part-specific motor, somatosensory and visual cortical regions. Both subject- and item-wise analyses showed that, relative to control sentences, metaphorical but not literal sentences evoked limb metaphor-specific activity in the left extrastriate body area (EBA), paralleling the EBA's known visual limb-selectivity. The EBA focus exhibited resting-state functional connectivity with ipsilateral semantic processing regions. In some of these regions, the strength of resting-state connectivity correlated with individual preference for verbal processing. Effective connectivity analyses showed that, during metaphor comprehension, activity in some semantic regions drove that in the EBA. These results provide converging evidence for grounding of metaphor processing in domain-specific sensorimotor cortical activity.

Recruitment of the occipital cortex by arithmetic processing follows computational bias in the congenitally blind

“…We therefore propose that the recruitment of occipital regions in the blind, even for higher cognitive abilities, finds its "neural niche" in a set of circuits that are sufficiently close to the required function and sufficiently plastic so as to strengthen or reorient a significant proportion of their neural resources for the non-visual function (Collignon et al, 2009). Interestingly, this raises the possibility that other higher cognitive domains such as language, which is also known to remap in the occipital cortex of the blind (Bedny et al, 2011;R€ oder et al, 2002), are also grounded in the native computational predisposition of these regions (Hasson et al, 2016;Lacey et al, 2012Lacey et al, , 2017van Ackeren et al, 2017). However, as activation per se does not necessarily imply a functional use (Lasne et al, 2018), future studies are needed to further explore and directly test this hypothesis.…”

The Margins of the Language Network in the Brain

“…Often metaphors are related to sensation and, thus, associated with brain activity in sensory regions. For example, "body" areas in secondary visual cortex are active during the comprehension of metaphors that are related to body parts (Lacey et al, 2017). Similarly, lexical items referring to olfaction can activate olfactory orbitofrontal cortex in case of both metaphorical and literal context (Pomp et al, 2018).…”

Topological and hodological aspects of body representation in right brain damaged patients

“…SEM), has been found to activate the fusiform gyrus, the precuneus and the middle frontal gyrus in the left hemisphere, as well as the precentral and superior frontal gyri in the right hemisphere and the right cerebellum (McCrea, 2007). Also, metaphorical references to body parts evoke specific activity in the left extrastriate body area (EBA), which activity is driven by an ipsilateral semantic network (Lacey et al, 2017). Spatial relation among the body parts, which allows for building up the BSR, mainly relies on the activation of the left posterior intraparietal sulcus (Corradi-Dell'Acqua et al, 2008).…”