ArticlePsychological research2022
Are metaphors embodied? The neural evidence.
Article in Psychological research, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- Beyond Representation: Metaphor as a Mechanism for Interpersonal Reconstruction of Embodied Experience.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2026Article
- A dual-process account of metaphorical embodiment.Psychological research · 2026Review
- Embodied grounding of abstract concepts: an image-based comparative analysis of sensorimotor and emotional experiences in Chinese.Cognitive processing · 2026Article
- Where is the self? Relations between head-heart dualism and social judgment.Consciousness and cognition · 2026Article
- The unity of sense and mind: A review of cross-domain mapping.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Review
- Exploring partially shared valuation-related neural responses between abstract desirability and food incentive evaluation.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Propositional vs. Imagistic Modes in Metaphoric Creativity.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2025Review
- Issues in Grounded Cognition and How to Solve Them - the Minimalist Account.Journal of cognition · 2025Article
- Therapeutic Metaphors Enhance Memory Systems in Mental Health Contexts.Brain and behavior · 2025Article
- The Role of Inhibition as a Component of Executive Functions in Metaphorical Embodiment.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2024Article
- Invariant representations in abstract concept grounding - the physical world in grounded cognition.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2024Review
- Some Contributions from Embodied Cognition to Psychonarratology.Journal of psycholinguistic research · 2024Review
- Embodiment and gestural realization of ergative verbs.Psychological research · 2024Article
- Schematic Embodiment of Perseverance in Persian.Journal of psycholinguistic research · 2024Article
- The concrete processing of Chinese action metaphors: an ERP study.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Cultural poetics of illness and healing.Transcultural psychiatry · 2023Article
- A Review of Studies Supporting Metaphorical Embodiment.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Gestural Embodiment of Intensifiers in Iconic, Metaphoric, and Beat Gestures.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- The Impact of Manner Adverb on the Gestural Embodiment of Actions Described by Literal and Metaphoric Sentences.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Experiencing sweet taste is associated with an increase in prosocial behavior.Scientific reports · 2023Article
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Abstract
concepts can potentially be represented using metaphorical mappings to concrete domains. This view predicts that when linguistic metaphors are processed, they will invoke sensory-motor simulations. Here, I examine evidence from neuroimaging and lesion studies that addresses whether metaphors in language are embodied in this manner. Given the controversy in this area, I first outline some criteria by which the quality of neuroimaging and lesion studies might be evaluated. I then review studies of metaphors in various sensory-motor domains, such as action, motion, texture, taste, and time, and examine their strengths and weaknesses. Studies of idioms are evaluated next. I also address some neuroimaging studies that can speak to the question of metaphoric conceptual organization without explicit use of linguistic metaphors. I conclude that the weight of the evidence suggests that metaphors are indeed grounded in sensory-motor systems. The case of idioms is less clear, and I suggest that they might be grounded in a qualitatively different manner than metaphors at higher levels of the action hierarchy. While metaphors are unlikely to explain all aspects of abstract concept representation, for some specific abstract concepts, there is also nonlinguistic neural evidence for metaphoric conceptual organization.
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