@article{496,
  author = {Francesca Citron and Jeremie G{\"u}sten and Nora Michaelis and Adele Goldberg},
  title = {Conventional metaphors in longer passages evoke affective brain response},
  abstract = {<p>Conventional metaphorical sentences such as She{\textquoteright}s a sweet child have been found to elicit greater amygdala activation than matched literal sentences (e.g., She{\textquoteright}s a kind child). In the present fMRI study, this finding is strengthened and extended with naturalistic stimuli involving longer passages and a range of conventional metaphors. In particular, a greater number of activation peaks (four) were found in the bilateral amygdala when passages containing conventional metaphors were read than when their matched literal versions were read (a single peak); while the direct contrast between metaphorical and literal passages did not show significant amygdala activation, a parametric analysis revealed that BOLD signal changes in the left amygdala correlated with an increase in metaphoricity ratings across all stories. Moreover, while a measure of complexity was positively correlated with increase in activation of a broad bilateral network mainly involving the temporal lobes, complexity was not predictive of amygdala activity. Thus, the results suggest that amygdala activation is not simply a result of stronger overall activity related to language comprehension, but is more specific to the processing of metaphorical language.</p>},
  year = {2016},
  journal = {NeuroImage},
  volume = {139},
  pages = {218{\textendash}230},
  publisher = {Academic Press},
}