Each of us remembers being a little kid, lying under the warm comforter, full of expectation, followed by awe as your parent reads a passage from your favorite book .Stories are important is our life, not only because they reflect of how we feel, how we live or how we want to live, but because they bring us to a new reality, the unexperienced one.
Current research is showing evidence of what happens inside of our brain when reading a story, encountering an emotional exchange between story characters or when reading a metaphor. Much of language processing occurs in two essential language-related center: Broca and Wernicke area. However, reading words related to sense also activates respective brain area. When reading a word "rose" or " vinegar", areas connected to smells, i.e., primary olfactory areas, are activated.
In a research published in Brain and Language, researchers were interested what brain regions are involved in processing of metaphors. Having a rough day; a singer having a velvet voice....All those metaphors activate also primary somatosensory areas responsive to texture processing. Interestingly, visual areas were not stimulated showing evidence for primacy of touch in texture perception.
The research demonstrates how our brain constructs an internal simulation when processing metaphors. Authors of the study concludes by saying:
" This also demonstrates how complex processes involving symbols, such as appreciating a painting or understanding a metaphor, do not depend just on evolutionarily new parts of the brain, but also on adaptations of older parts of the brain."
Current research is showing evidence of what happens inside of our brain when reading a story, encountering an emotional exchange between story characters or when reading a metaphor. Much of language processing occurs in two essential language-related center: Broca and Wernicke area. However, reading words related to sense also activates respective brain area. When reading a word "rose" or " vinegar", areas connected to smells, i.e., primary olfactory areas, are activated.
In a research published in Brain and Language, researchers were interested what brain regions are involved in processing of metaphors. Having a rough day; a singer having a velvet voice....All those metaphors activate also primary somatosensory areas responsive to texture processing. Interestingly, visual areas were not stimulated showing evidence for primacy of touch in texture perception.
The research demonstrates how our brain constructs an internal simulation when processing metaphors. Authors of the study concludes by saying:
" This also demonstrates how complex processes involving symbols, such as appreciating a painting or understanding a metaphor, do not depend just on evolutionarily new parts of the brain, but also on adaptations of older parts of the brain."
