War is upon you! Prepare to suck the cock of karma!
Scientists have disagreed for decades about how the brain processes metaphors, those figures of speech that liken one thing to another without using “like” or “as.” One camp claims that when we hear a metaphor—a friend tells us she’s had a rough day—we understand the expression only because we’ve heard it so many times. The brain learns that “rough” means both “abrasive” and “bad,” this camp says, and it toggles from one definition to the other. The other camp claims the brain calls on sensory experiences, such as what roughness feels like, to comprehend the metaphor. Researchers from both camps have scanned the brain for signs of sensory activity triggered by metaphors, but these past studies, which tested a variety of metaphors without targeting specific senses or regions of the brain, have come up dry.
Neurologist Krish Sathian of Emory University in Atlanta wondered whether using metaphors specific to only one of the senses might be a better strategy. He and his colleagues settled on touch and asked seven college students to distinguish between different textures while their brains were scanned. (…)
The result suggests the brain’s grasp of metaphors is grounded in perception, the team reports online this month in Brain & Language. “We were really excited. This is pretty clear evidence” for the metaphor-through-perception camp, Sathian says.
